Why making it snappy may not be speedy enough

“AT A drop of a hat” is almost 200 times faster than a “blink of the eye”, according to a new study.

Analysis by scientists of 20 clichés related to speed show which are actually really fast and which struggle to keep up.

The top three were all forces of nature – with “at the speed of light”, “lightning fast” and “like a comet” taking the top spots, followed by the man-made creations of “supersonic” (the fastest recorded space shuttle) and “a speeding bullet”.

The insights come from University Campus Suffolk, which calculated the speed of everything from Britain’s fastest greyhound to “a bat out of hell” to create a league table of speed clichés.

In the animal kingdom, “one fell swoop” came out top, as a peregrine falcon’s stoop (or swoop) reaches 108.05 metres per second (m/s). Next was “a bat out of hell” coming in at 35.8m/s, the velocity of a diving Mexican free-tailed bat; followed by “off like a hare” and “off like a grey- hound”, just 2.4m/s apart at the lower end of the table.

The study also revealed that although you might want something “before you know it”, someone working at “full throttle” would be quicker by 136m/s, as a piston plane travels faster than our body’s signals.

Prof Mohamed Abdel-Maguid, from University Campus Suffolk, said: “From ‘a flick of a switch’ to a ‘ferret up a trouser leg’, we searched high and wide to find out what really is the fastest speed cliché.

“Whether it was looking through the records of Belle Vue for the quickest greyhound, studying the speed at which we can snap our fingers for ‘make it snappy’, or investigating how fast flames can spread through black powder for ‘a flash in the pan’, this list provides comprehensive proof of the quickest speed clichés we commonly use.”

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