To see, fixed in the rigidity of death and naked on that coarse layer of sackcloth, the man whom he had left well clad and full of meat and sin upon the threshold of a tavern, awoke, even in the thoughtless Fettes, some of the terrors of the conscience.
GCIDE(0.00 / 0 votes)Rate this definition: Warp speed. literally, a speed faster than the speed of light; fig., an extremely high speed, usually the fastest possible; -- used only in the figurative sense except in fiction.
In the context of a captain ordering a helmsman to set a course for [location], maximum warp, maximum warp means the fastest warp speed the ship can safely maintain. In TOS, this varied, but was usually somewhere around warp 7 or warp 8. In TNG and later series, starships frequently achieve speeds of just over warp 9. In a different context, maximum warp could be taken to mean the maximum warp factor that's theoretically possible. In the 23rd century (TOS), warp factors of up to 15 are possible. However, by the 24th century (TNG, DS9, VOY), the warp scale seems to have been recalibrated, and warp 10 represents the transwarp barrier.