shaken

Pluralshaken

1. 1
   verb

   Past participle of shake.

   The medicine should be shaken well before each dose.

   By dawn the earthquake had shaken loose several tiles from the roof.

   Note

   The form that follows have and be: the bottle must be shaken, the tremor had shaken the tiles loose. Its simple past is shook, and the two should not be swapped. Write they had shaken, not they had shook. The participle carries every sense of shake, from a physical jolt to an emotional shock, and that emotional passive (was shaken by the news) is where the "shocked" adjective comes from.

2. 2
   adjective

   Emotionally distressed or unsettled in the aftermath of a frightening or shocking experience.

   Like a glass of water that keeps trembling long after the table is bumped.

   The witnesses looked visibly shaken as they left the courtroom.

   Deeply shaken by the news, she sat in silence for an hour.

   Similarupset, shocked, unsettled, distressed

   Oppositecalm, composed

   Note

   Here the participle has settled into a true adjective, and you can tell because it grades. It takes more and most, and intensifiers such as deeply and visibly. Its favorite frame is left shaken, which puts the weight on the aftermath rather than the moment of shock. A verb reading always stays close by in the participle, so was shaken by the revelations can be read either way.

   We were left shaken by the revelations of abuse.

   The truth left many people shaken.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A flat throwing weapon shaped like a spiked wheel, distinct from the longer, stick-like form of shuriken.

   Like a circular saw blade shrunk down to fit in the palm of a hand.

   She practiced throwing the shaken until it stuck in the post every time.

   The museum displayed several shaken alongside other concealed weapons.

   Note

   A different word altogether, borrowed from Japanese 車剣 and unrelated to shake. Only the spelling is shared. It names one shape within the shuriken family, the flat spiked wheel, as against the longer stick-like kind. The plural is unchanged (one shaken, several shaken), so context alone separates the weapon from the participle.

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