Definition of "swifter" [swift•er]

• Comparative form of swift: more swift (adjective)
• To tighten (e.g. slack standing rigging) by bringing the opposite shrouds nearer. (verb)

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• "87 But if we attentively reflect how much swifter is the progress of corruption than its cure, and if we remember that the years abandoned to public disorders exceeded the months allotted to the martial reign of Aurelian, we must confess that a few short intervals of peace were insufficient for the arduous work of reformation."
• "Extremes must meet, it is their urgent necessity; the reason for their distance, and the greater the distance between them, the swifter will be their return and the warmer their impact: they may shatter each other to fragments or they may fuse and become indissoluble and new and wonderful, but there is no other fertility."
• "In the neighbourhood of the mountains lived the Troglodytes, men of various appearances, whom the Lixitæ described as swifter in running than horses."