shake
Verbshakes, shaking, shook, shaken
Noun pluralshakes
Formsshakes, shaking, shook, shaken
Pluralshakes
- 1To make something move quickly back and forth or up and down.
You should shake the canister vigorously to mix the paint.
The nurse shook the thermometer to reset the mercury.
Similaragitate, jiggle, rattle
Note
The core transitive sense, from Old English sċeacan and ultimately a root meaning "to jump, move." The verb is ergative: the thing shaken can also be the subject, so "the earthquake shook the building" and "the building shook" describe one event. Here the shaker is named. When the trembling thing stands alone, the verb has become the intransitive trembling sense.
- 2To move repeatedly from side to side.
Tall buildings shake slightly during strong earthquakes.
Her hands shook as she opened the letter.
Note
The intransitive verb of the body, usually with its cause attached by with: shake with grief, with fear, with cold. Tremble and shiver are its near neighbors. It can also describe an aftermath, as when a coughing fit leaves a patient shaking in W. B. Maxwell's The Mirror and the Lamp (1918).
- 3To move one's head from side to side, especially to show refusal or disapproval.
The interviewer shook her head at the unrealistic demand.
Parents often shake their heads at their teenagers' choices.
Oppositenod
Note
A gesture verb with a fixed object: what is shaken is one's own head, and the message is usually no. The King James Bible of 1611 has "they shaked their heads," with the regular past tense that now survives only as a rare form. Modern English says shook, and the gesture itself keeps its old meaning of refusal or reproach.
- 4A quick to-and-fro or trembling movement, or the act of making something move that way.
A firm shake of the carton settled the cereal.
The sudden shake of the floor sent everyone running outside.
Similarjolt, jerk, tremor, jiggle
Note
The noun of motion pairs naturally with give and with of. The cat gave the mouse a shake; she answered with a shake of her head. "Give something a shake" is the everyday way to describe a single quick shaking. "A shake of the head" carries the same refusal as the verb it comes from.
- 5To disturb someone emotionally; to leave them shocked or unsettled.
The accident shook everyone who witnessed it.
Betrayals like that shake even the most confident people.
Similarshock, traumatize
Note
The emotional sense is often met in the passive or as an adjective built on shaken: he was shaken by what had happened. In the active it readily takes a degree adverb, as in "shook her terribly." It also scales up from people to institutions, as when The Economist described academia's ivory towers as shaken to their foundations.
- 6To get rid of, escape, or evade someone or something.
The runner tried to shake her closest competitor on the final lap.
He couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong.
Similarlose, escape, evade, elude
Note
An idiomatic extension of throwing something off. What is shaken is no longer a physical thing but a pursuer, a habit or, most typically, a feeling. "I can't shake the feeling that…" is the set phrase, and it sits naturally with can't, because the point is usually the failure to get free.
- 7To clasp and move another person's hand up and down, usually in greeting or agreement.
After the match, the players shook and left the court.
Let's shake on it and move on.
Note
Short for shake hands, and usually completed with on. "Let's shake on it" seals an agreement rather than offering a greeting. The bare verb can describe two players shaking after a match, but the shake-on construction is where it does most of its work, turning a gesture into a promise.
- 8A thick, cold drink made by blending milk with ice cream and flavoring.
He blended a banana shake after his workout.
The diner is famous for its thick vanilla shakes.
Similarmilkshake
- 9To dislodge or remove something by jolting, agitating, or vibrating it off.
She shook the sand out of her shoes.
Farmers shake ripe olives from the branches onto nets.
Similarknock
Note
Here the shaking has a destination, so the verb travels with a particle or a from-phrase: shake off, shake out, shake down, shake fruit from a tree. Shakespeare's "Shake off the golden slumber of repose" and Bunyan's "I could scarce shake him out of my company" show the pattern turning figurative early. A mood or an unwanted companion can be shaken loose like dust.
- 10An involuntary twitch, spasm, or trembling of the body.
A violent shake gripped his limbs as the fever rose.
Fear sent a shake through her whole body.
Similartremor, shiver, shudder, spasm
Note
Usually plural, and in the plural it names a condition rather than a single twitch: to have the shakes is to tremble uncontrollably. Marlowe's Tamburlaine already uses the plural, with a weary head falling "with shakes of death," the tremors of a body giving way.
- 11
- 12A very brief moment; an instant.
She promised to finish the job in two shakes.
Hang on a shake while I grab my coat.
Similarmoment, second, minute, jiffy
Note
Time measured in shakes is always short and often plural: the word lives in phrases like in two shakes or in a few shakes, promising that something will happen almost at once. Wodehouse uses it in Jeeves in the Offing (1960): "in a few shakes I've got to show up at dinner." It belongs to easy conversation rather than formal prose, and unlike the ten-nanosecond unit, it names no exact length.
- 13A shock or disturbance, especially a sudden, upsetting event.
The scandal sent a shake through the entire company.
His sudden resignation was a shake nobody expected.
Note
The noun partner of the emotional verb, though it can fall on more than feelings. In Elizabeth Gaskell's Cousin Phillis (1864), the narrator notices "the visible shake" a fever had given to Mr. Holdsworth's health. "Give a shake to" is the natural construction, and the thing shaken can be health as readily as nerves.
- 14To threaten the stability of something, as if about to overthrow it.
Mass strikes can shake even a powerful regime.
The revolution shook the foundations of the old empire.
Similarrock, undermine, destabilize
- 15A dance popular in the 1960s in which the dancer shakes the head, limbs, and body.
At the club, couples spun and did the shake all night.
The band played a fast number, and everyone got up to do the shake.
Note
A dance name that normally takes the definite article: you do the shake, just as you do the frug. Allen V. Ross's Vice in Bombay (1969) places it beside the frug and the monkey. It belonged to that company of the decade's dances, each named for the movement it asked of the body.
- 16To dance, moving the body energetically in time with music.
Couples shake on the floor until the last song ends.
He shook all night once the DJ found his rhythm.
Note
A dance-floor use that often takes a dummy object, as in shaking it, where it refers to nothing in particular except the body in motion. The bare intransitive also works. The it-construction gives the sense its casual, nightclub feel. Compare the 1960s dance that carries the same name.
- 17A basic wooden shingle split from logs, traditionally used for roofing and similar coverings.
A single shake had been pried loose by the storm.
Roofers laid overlapping shakes down the slope of the barn.
Similarshingle
- 18A thin shingle, used as a wooden covering for roofs or walls.
A loose shake near the eaves let water seep into the attic.
Thin shakes lay in tight, even courses across the gable.
Similarshingle
Note
A building-trade word that works both as a count noun, meaning one thin shingle, and as a mass noun for the roofing material as a whole. It sits close to the split-log shingle. The difference is one of emphasis: thinness here, the splitting from logs there.
- 19
- 20
- 21A rapid alternation of a main tone with the note one step above or below it; a trill.
She placed a quick shake on the last beat of the measure.
The harpsichordist sprinkled shakes through every ornamented line.
Similartrill
Note
A musical ornament defined by the staff itself. The second note is whatever sits on the next line or space, so the interval follows the key rather than a fixed size. The verb to shake a note names the same act. In singing, keep it distinct from the vibrato sense, where a single pitch wavers rather than two notes alternating.
- 22
- 23A drink in which ice cream is added to another beverage, usually a fizzy one.
He sipped a shake while the ice cream slowly fizzed into the cola.
The counter's shakes always came with a long spoon for the ice cream.
Similarfloat
- 24Loose, leafy bits of cannabis that collect at the bottom of a bag of marijuana.
She swept the loose shake from the corners of the pouch.
What was left in the jar had crumbled down to shake.
- 25A substance mixed into powdered cocaine to bulk it out or dilute it.
The lab found that the seized brick was packed with shake.
Buyers complained that the product was cut hard with shake.
Note
US drug-trade slang for the cut, not the drug: the powder mixed into cocaine to stretch it. Terry Williams's The Cocaine Kids (1989) gives the trade's own arithmetic: up to 120 grams of shake to a kilo, or 12 percent, before buyers complain. Keep it apart from the leafy cannabis fragments, which are part of the drug itself.
- 26Notes, usually high ones, sung with vibrato.
She finished the aria on a soaring shake.
The old ballad called for shakes at the end of each verse.
Note
A singer's shake could make a reputation. In Letitia Elizabeth Landon's Romance and Reality (1831), the Neapolitans hear of nothing the next day "but her shake and her smile." Here a single note wavers. It is not the two-note alternation of the trill, though older writing uses the same word for both.
- 27One of the staves of a hogshead or barrel that has been taken apart.
A single shake had warped too badly to be reused.
The hold was stacked with shakes ready for reassembly overseas.
Similarstave
Note
Casks were taken apart at sea to save space. William Scoresby's An Account of the Arctic Regions (1820) describes empty casks broken down and their staves packed closely in a cylinder, "constituting what are called shakes or packs." The word belongs to shipping and cooperage. The bundled set of pieces has its own name, a shook.
- 28A complete set of staves and heading pieces for a barrel, bundled flat together.
One shake contained everything a cooper needed for a single cask.
The warehouse stored dozens of shakes against the spring shipping season.
Note
A cooper's word explained by another cooper's word: shook, the bundle of staves and headings that makes one barrel. That spelling is also the past tense of the verb, so "a shook of staves" and "the earthquake shook the town" share their letters but not their sense. Context alone tells them apart.
- 29An informal time unit of ten nanoseconds, used in nuclear physics.
A single shake passes far faster than any instrument can show the eye.
Engineers timed the early stages of the blast in shakes.
Note
A physicists' unit that puts a number on the everyday "instant". Ruth H. Howes and Caroline L. Herzenberg's Their Day in the Sun (2003) times a bomb's chain reaction in shakes: the device had to hold together for about fifty-seven of them. The unit is now historical, so a modern reader usually needs it explained.
- 30The redshank, a wading bird, so named from the nodding of its head while on the ground.
A lone shake probed the shallows for worms at low tide.
Flocks of shakes scattered as the dog ran across the marsh.
Similarredshank
Note
A UK dialect name for the wading bird, given for the way it nods its head while on the ground. It is the same motion as shaking one's head, borrowed as a name. Because it is regional, redshank is the word to use in ordinary writing. Shake belongs to local speech and to writing that wants that local flavor.
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Origin
From Middle English schaken, from Old English sċeacan ("to shake"), going back through Proto-Germanic *skakaną ("to shake, swing, escape") to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to jump" or "move." It is related to words like Old Norse skaka and Swedish skaka, both meaning "to shake."