Fasting plays an important role in many religions, as well as in diets and forms of protest.
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Is fasting at all related to fast as in “quick” or “firmly fixed in place”?
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WHAT IS A FAST?
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To fast is a verb that means “to abstain from all food,” or “to eat only sparingly or of certain kinds of food, especially as a religious observance.”
Fast can also be used as a noun in the sense of “a day or period of fasting.”
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WHAT ABOUT BREAKFAST?
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Breakfast is a compound made up of the words BREAK and FAST, and the meaning is just as straightforward. Quite literally, when you eat in the morning, you are breaking your fast from when you were sleeping the night before.
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WHERE DOES THE WORD FAST COME FROM?
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Fast comes from the Old English word fæstan. It’s a cognate of similar words in Germanic languages, like the German fasten and Old Norse fasta.
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Like run, fast is one of those words with a wide range of meanings.
Fast can be an adjective meaning “quick,” as in cheetahs are fast, as well as an adverb meaning “quickly” or “done in a short amount of time,” as in the medicine is working very fast.
Fast can be used as an adverb in the sense of “holding tightly,” like a boat held fast to the dock.
Fast can also mean “soundly,” as in someone who is fast asleep.
Etymologists believe that they are, in fact, all ultimately related.
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HUNGER STRIKE
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There’s another reason that people fast that has nothing to do with religion or health: fasting in protest or to raise awareness of an issue.
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Mahatma Gandhi fasted to protest colonial rule in India, and people who are imprisoned have long used hunger strikes to call attention to prison conditions.
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American military veterans fasted in protest of President Ronald Reagan’s policies, and Reagan himself declared November 24, 1985 the National Day of Fasting To Raise Funds To Combat Hunger.
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Alexei Navalny is now gradually returning to a normal diet after a 24-day hunger strike, which he declared in protest against his medical care in a prison in the Vladimir region.