panic
Pluralpanics (some meanings)
Verbpanics, panicking, panicked
Pluralpanics (some meanings)
Formspanics, panicking, panicked
- 1Overwhelming fear or fright, especially when it spreads through a group of people or animals.
A single gunshot sent the herd into blind panic.
Rumors of a shortage caused widespread panic among shoppers.
Similaralarm, terror, hysteria, fear, fright
Oppositecalm, composure, serenity
Note
Usually a mass noun, so it needs no article. Louis Joseph Vance's heroine wakes "in sharp panic," and F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tom feels "the hot whips of panic" in The Great Gatsby. With a possessive it becomes one person's episode: Margery Allingham's Nanny Broome recovers "from her initial panic." With a, it becomes a single scare. It spreads naturally through groups, as "Weird Al" Yankovic sings of it gripping an audience.
- 2To suddenly feel overwhelming fear or fright, losing the ability to think or act calmly.
Investors began to panic as the markets tumbled.
She panicked and slammed on the brakes.
Note
The everyday intransitive needs no object, unlike the causative verb: people simply panic. Greta Thunberg turned the familiar advice around in her 2019 speech Our House is on Fire: "I don't want you to be hopeful, I want you to panic." She then asked her listeners to act. In casual speech, freak out and lose one's head sit close beside it.
- 3To cause someone to feel sudden overwhelming fear, or to frighten them into acting hastily.
Don't let one bad headline panic you into selling your shares.
The sudden noise panicked the horses.
Similarfrighten, scare, alarm, spook, startle
Oppositecalm, reassure, soothe, settle
Note
The causative verb appears in Rudyard Kipling's Limits and Renewals (1927): "that panicked him." Its forms add a k before -ed and -ing (panicked, panicking) so that the c keeps its hard sound, while panics needs none. The same spelling holds for every verb sense of the word. With into, it names the hasty act that fear forces: panicking someone into a decision.
- 4Brought on by overwhelming fear or alarm, or connected with a state of such fear.
His panic response to criticism often alienated his colleagues.
The government's panic measures only deepened public anxiety.
Similarknee-jerk, hasty, frantic, rash, frenzied
Oppositecalm, measured, considered
Note
Where the "overwhelming" adjective describes the fear itself, this one describes what fear touches or produces: panic measures, a panic response. Older English could apply it to the frightened people too. Daniel Defoe's The Dutch Deputies: A Satyr (1705) pictures "the pannick French-men trembling at their Feet." A modern writer would reach for panic-stricken there.
- 5Of fear, fright, or a similar feeling: overwhelming or coming on suddenly.
A panic dread seized the soldiers as the line broke.
A panic fear of being trapped kept him out of elevators for years.
Similarsudden, overwhelming, blind
Note
Pan's fright entered ordinary speech through this sense, the fear of the mythological adjective made general. Its classic partner was terror. John Florio's 1603 translation of Montaigne's Essayes speaks of "the Panike terror," and Plutarch's Apophthegmes of the same year speaks of "Panique Terrores." It could also follow the verb. In 1647 Nathaniel Ward hoped "my feares are but panick," meaning frights without a real cause.
- 6A rapid fall in asset prices driven by widespread selling to raise cash, as investors expect prices to keep dropping.
The 1873 panic triggered a long depression across Europe and America.
Fear of insolvency spread until a full banking panic took hold.
Note
Markets know a fear that feeds itself. Holders rush to raise cash because they expect prices to fall, and the rush makes them fall. Unlike the general feeling, it is countable and often named for its moment. In Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, a fortune is lost "in the big panic—the panic of the war." In 2008 Chris Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat defending Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, warned of "sort of a panic."
- 7Ellipsis of kernel panic.
The technician traced the panic to a faulty device driver.
Each panic dumped a stack trace to the console before halting.
Note
Systems programmers shortened kernel panic to plain panic. It names the action an operating system takes when a fatal error leaves it no way to recover. Loosely, any crash gets the name. The noun and its verbs travel together. In 2010, Solaris system engineers warned that a faulty driver can trap a machine in "the cycle of panic, reboot, and panic."
- 8Of a computer system, to suffer a crash and stop running abruptly.
Older kernels would panic the moment they lost the root filesystem.
The machine panicked during the firmware update.
Note
Said of the machine itself, the system panics much as people do in the human sense. It is the verb behind the computing noun: a kernel stops because a fatal error leaves it no safe way forward. Transitive and intransitive share one form, so "the kernel panicked" and "the driver panicked the kernel" are both correct.
- 9In computing, to bring a computer system to an abrupt halt by making it crash.
A single corrupted module can panic the kernel instantly.
The test deliberately panicked the server to check recovery.
Similarcrash
Note
The system is the object, and something else is the culprit. Solaris documentation speaks of a driver error "that panics the system." It is the transitive companion of the system-crash verb, built on the computing noun, and it takes the same panicked and panicking spellings as the everyday verb.
- 10An entertainer, act, or show that people find hilariously funny or hugely entertaining.
That sketch was such a panic the whole theater was in tears.
Their drummer is a panic. He keeps the whole crew laughing.
Similarriot, scream, hoot, laugh
Note
Stage talk that passed into casual American speech, in the same family as a riot and a scream. Calling a comic a panic means the audience was helpless with laughter, not fear. It is countable (a panic, such a panic), and that article is the quickest way to tell it from the feeling of fright.
- 11To delight an audience with a performance or make a strong impression on it.
The veteran comic could panic a roomful of strangers within minutes.
His closing bit panicked the audience and brought down the house.
Oppositebore
Note
This is the verb of the "riot" noun. A performer who panics an audience leaves it helpless with laughter or delight, not terror. It is American and colloquial, and it needs an object: you panic the house, the crowd, a room. Without one, the verb slides back toward losing one's head, so a comic who simply panicked was in trouble rather than triumphant.
- 12Any of various grasses of the genus Panicum, or similar grasses once classified within it, known as panicgrass.
Several species of panic thrive in poor, sandy soils.
The meadow was thick with panic and other wild grasses.
Similarpanicgrass
Note
Its English name was proposed in print. In 1562 William Turner wrote that Panicum "hathe no name in English yet, but it may well be called panick after the Latin." By 1597, John Gerard's Herball already counted "sundrie sorts of Panick," wild and garden. Some of those plants now sit in Echinochloa and Setaria, which is why the common name reaches beyond the genus.
- 13The edible grain harvested from panicgrass or related Panicum species.
In lean years, villagers survived on bread made from panic.
The recipe called for a cup of panic boiled in milk.
Note
The grain served the old apothecary as well as the kitchen. John Gerard's Herball (1597), citing Pliny, says panic boiled in goat's milk "stoppeth the laske," checking diarrhea as millet does. Gerard judged bread made from it poor fare, nourishing little and "cold and dry, verie brittle." As food it is mostly a mass noun, as in a cup of panic.
- 14Foxtail millet (Setaria italica), the second-most widely grown species of millet.
Across much of Asia, panic remains an important food and fodder crop.
They sowed panic in spring and harvested it before the fall rains.
Note
A different word entirely shares only its spelling with the fearful one. It comes from Late Middle English panik, from Latin pānicum, which named this very millet. Where the Latin came from is uncertain, possibly pānis, "bread." Foxtail millet was the original meaning, and the name later spread to the wider grass genus. Nothing connects it to Pan.
- 15Alternative letter-case form of Panic (pertaining to the Greek god Pan).
The travelers spoke of the panic terror that seized them in the lonely grove.
Wild pipe music was thought to honor the panic spirit of the wilderness.
Note
The god's own adjective: borrowed through Middle French panique from Greek panikós, "pertaining to Pan." Pan, god of fields and woods, was thought to send mysterious sounds that spread contagious, groundless fear through herds, crowds and lonely travelers. That fear became the everyday senses of panic. The lowercase spelling is archaic. Modern writers capitalize it as Panic, and Pandean says the same thing without the ambiguity.
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Origins
The adjective was borrowed from Middle French panique, itself from Ancient Greek panikós ('pertaining to Pan'). Pan, the Greek god of fields and woods, was believed to be the source of mysterious sounds that caused contagious, groundless fear in herds and crowds. The noun derives from the adjective, and the verb in turn from the noun.
From Late Middle English panik or panyk (a plant of the genus Panicum), borrowed from Latin panicum ('foxtail or Italian millet'). Its further etymology is uncertain, probably either from panis ('bread'; perhaps ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *peh₂-, 'to graze, protect, shepherd') or panus ('ear of millet') plus the suffix -cum. It is a doublet of bannock and bonnag.