Immediacy

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ɪˈmiːdi.əsi/

Definitions

1. The quality of being direct, urgent, or occurring without delay or intervening steps
2. The state of occurring instantly or with no pause between cause and effect
3. The characteristic of something happening promptly without any waiting period

Etymology: "Immediacy" is about as plain as English word-building gets: it is "immediate" with the suffix "-acy" attached. The base "immediate" comes from Medieval Latin "immediatus", literally "not intervening", built from Latin "in-" meaning "not" and "medius" meaning "middle". So the original sense is something with nothing between it and what it touches, and that core idea of no intervening step carries straight through to the noun. The suffix "-acy" comes from Latin "-atia" and "-acia" through French, and it forms abstract nouns of state or quality, as in "accuracy" or "privacy". Attaching it to "immediate" turns the adjective's sense of "without intermediary" into a named quality, the state of being direct, urgent, or without delay. The noun was formed in English, so it is a relatively late derivation rather than an ancient inherited term.

Synonyms: urgency, promptness, instancy, directness

Antonyms: delay, indirectness, remoteness