Meaning & Analysis
Said of someone who is not hasty—i.e., slow to begin or to dispatch business.
Insights
Temperamental slowness
Labels a person whose default pace is unhurried, who moves through tasks without urgency and is hard to galvanize.
Over-caution
Imputes a reluctance to commit or act, where excessive deliberation causes delays, missed chances, or lost momentum.
Anti-impulsivity
By negating ‘Hastings,’ it casts the speaker as the opposite of hot-blooded or rash—one who will not ‘break his shins for haste.’
Social ribbing
Functions as teasing or mild censure in work settings: a witty tag for the colleague who never seems in a rush when others are.
Onomastic pun
The force lies in wordplay: ‘Hastings’ (a noble surname) is heard as ‘the hast-ings’—the hasty ones. To be ‘none of the Hastings’ wryly means ‘not one of the hasty,’ yoking family name to a trait.
Class and caricature
Early citations wink at pedigree (Hastings, Hotspur). The joke pretends that speed is a clan trait; lacking it marks one as outside that imaginary lineage of quick-actors.
Agrarian gloss
A later note links it to ‘forward peas’—early crops—suggesting a seasonal metaphor: those who are ‘Hastings’ are first to ripen; our subject is not among them.
Cultural counterpoint
While many proverbs warn against rashness, this one satirizes the opposite excess: sloth or dilatoriness. It implies a golden mean—neither Hotspur’s rashness nor torpor.
Rhetorical Devices
Pun (paronomasia)
Plays on ‘Hastings’/‘hasty,’ converting a surname into a type, which makes the gibe memorable and socially portable.
Litotes
The negative form (‘none of’) softens the charge while still delivering a pointed assessment of slowness.
Allusion
Echoes chivalric quickness (Hotspur) and noble houses, smuggling social color into a pace critique.
Ellipsis
Leaves the specific fault unstated (tardiness is implied), inviting listeners to fill in the scene—lagging at work, dawdling at errands.
Transcription
Quotations
Toward your work (quoth he) ye make such tastings As approue you to be none of the hastyngs.
I knowe yow of olde yow are none of the hastlinges.
These women are all of the hastinges.
Of kin to the Hastings.
A low spirited man . . he is none of the Hastings'es.
(You are none).
Now men commonly say they are none of the Hastings, who, being slow and slack, go about business with no agility.
I am none of the Hastings, relating to forward pease.
To be none of those that run races, viz. to be none of the Hastings, or over credulous of any thing that is told one.
*Spoken of a slow person.
(You are none).
You are none of the Hastings, you'l not break your shins for hast.
*Of him that loses an Opportunity or a Business for want of Dispatch.
You are none of the Hastings, nor Hotspurs.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
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