earthquake

Pluralearthquakes

Formsearthquakes, earthquaking, earthquaked

1. 1
   nouncountable

   Shaking of the earth's surface that results from rock shifting along geologic faults or from volcanic activity.

   The earthquake toppled chimneys across the older part of the city.

   Scientists placed sensors along the fault line to record even the smallest earthquakes.

   Similarquake, tremor, temblor, shock

   Note

   An everyday compound with a long pedigree. Middle English erthequake is simply earth plus quake, and it pushed out an older native word, Old English eorþbeofung, literally "earth shaking." Spenser still writes it hyphenated, as Earth-quake, in The Faerie Queene (1590), where a panting breast quakes "as it an Earth-quake were". Today it is one closed word, and quake alone has come to carry the meaning in newer coinages such as moonquake.

2. 2
   nounfigurativelycountable

   A sudden, intense upheaval, or any event that causes severe disruption.

   The court's ruling was a political earthquake that reshaped the campaign overnight.

   The collapse of the region's biggest bank set off an economic earthquake that lasted for years.

   Similarupheaval, shock, convulsion, bombshell

   Note

   News writing reaches for this word when a familiar order suddenly cracks. It usually comes with an adjective naming the arena, as in a political earthquake or an economic earthquake. The metaphor tends to keep going, so one earthquake sends shockwaves into another field. It suits a single abrupt event with lasting consequences, not gradual change, which is the logic it borrows from the literal shaking.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A quake of the ground occurring specifically on the planet Earth, as distinguished from quakes on other celestial bodies.

   Seismometers on Mars detect marsquakes, while networks on our own planet record thousands of earthquakes each year.

   Unlike a moonquake, an earthquake typically results from slippage along boundaries between tectonic plates.

   Note

   Planetary scientists read the first half of the word as the planet's name, which makes an earthquake one member of a family alongside the moonquake. The distinction has practical weight. Bruce A. Bolt's Earthquakes (2006) observes that lunar seismograms show less distinct secondary and surface waves. Jürgen Oberst and Yosio Nakamura (1988) expected structures on a lunar base to suffer differently from moonquakes than buildings do from earthquakes.

4. 4
   verbintransitive

   To undergo an earthquake; to be shaken by seismic movement of the ground.

   Regions along major faults earthquake far more often than the stable interiors of continents.

   The coast earthquaked so violently that bridges swayed for nearly a minute.

   Similarquake, shake, tremble

   Note

   A noun turned verb, conjugated regularly: earthquakes, earthquaking, earthquaked. It takes no object. Its subject is the place or the volcano that shakes. The -ing form often works as a noun for ongoing seismic activity, as in Gyeorgos C. Hatonn's "increased earthquaking within Mayon" (1993). In that use it reads like rumbling, a continuous process rather than a single event.

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