hand over fist

At a brisk pace or rate. This doll is so popular that the manufacturer is making money hand over fist. We could make money hand over fist if we patented this idea. You do realize that the people making cash hand over fist during the recession were doing so at the expense of many homeowners and small businesses, right?

Fig. [for money and merchandise to be exchanged] very rapidly. What a busy day. We took in money hand over fist. They were buying things hand over fist.

Rapidly, at a tremendous rate, as in He's making money hand over fist. This expression is derived from the nautical hand over hand, describing how a sailor climbed a rope. [First half of 1800s]

If you are making or losing money hand over fist, you are making or losing a lot of money very quickly. AAC's speciality channels were making money hand over fist. The companies had no skills and almost all were losing money hand over fist. Note: This expression comes from the image of a sailor moving his hands steadily one over the other while pulling in a rope or raising a sail.

At a tremendous rate: made money hand over fist.

Moving quickly. This term comes from sailing and began life as hand over hand, which is how sailors climbed a rope. In nineteenth-century America it was changed to hand over fist and was transferred to any enterprise in which rapid, easy progress is being made. Thus Seba Smith wrote, “They clawed the money off of his table hand over fist” (Major Downing, 1833).

Continuously. A sailor hauls in lines (“ropes” to you, landlubbers) not by jerky interrupted pulls, but in a smooth hand-over-hand motion. That's the image applied to people who make money hand over fist, which is how the phrase is most always used.