make fast

English

Verb

make fast (third-person singular simple present makes fast, present participle making fast, simple past and past participle made fast)

1. To tie reliably.
   • 1898, Joseph Conrad, Youth:

     I pulled back, made fast again to the jetty, and then went to sleep at last.

   • 1881, Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque:

     It is a well-known fact that an immense proportion of boat accidents would never happen if people held the sheet in their hands instead of making it fast; and yet, unless it be some martinet of a professional mariner or some landsman with shattered nerves, every one of God's creatures makes it fast.