shock
Pluralshocks
Pluralshocks
Formsshocks, shocking, shocked
- 1A state of distress that follows sudden bad news or another deeply upsetting event.
The family remained in shock for weeks after the diagnosis.
News of the layoffs sent the whole office into collective shock.
Note
The state rather than the blow, and it has its own preposition: people are in shock, or are sent into shock. In Wally Lamb's The Hour I First Believed (2008), a woman who feels nothing at all is told she has not yet been able to "absorb the shock of it." Numbness belongs to this sense as much as distress does.
- 2An event or fact so surprising that it stuns those who encounter it.
The election result was a shock to political analysts everywhere.
His sudden resignation came as a shock to the entire board.
Similarsurprise, astonishment, amazement, awe, bewilderment
- 3A sudden or violent disturbance to one's mental or emotional state.
The unexpected betrayal was a profound shock to him.
A loud explosion outside produced a shock that left her trembling.
Similarblow, jolt, trauma, upset
Note
Psychology's word for the jolt itself, the moment a disturbance lands. In Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler's On Grief and Grieving (2005), "a tremendous shock arises when a secret is discovered." It is usually counted (a shock, a tremendous shock), and that sets it apart from the lingering state, in which a person is in shock.
- 4A sudden burst of electrical energy passing through a person or animal.
She felt a sharp shock when she gripped the frayed cable.
Faulty wiring delivered a painful shock to the technician.
Note
Medicine uses the word for current delivered on purpose as well as by accident. In Sandeep Jauhar's Heart: a History (2018), external defibrillators deliver shocks, and they were painful when patients were still conscious. Deliver and give are the natural verbs, and the word counts freely. Keep it apart from circulatory shock, a medical emergency with no electricity in it.
- 5To make someone feel suddenly surprised and upset.
Reports of the scandal shocked the public.
Such revelations can shock even seasoned reporters.
Similarshatter
- 6A sudden, heavy impact or violent collision.
The shock of the explosion shattered windows several blocks away.
Engineers designed the barrier to absorb the shock of a collision.
Similarimpact, jolt, blast, force
Note
The literal blow that the other meanings grow from. Its roots lie in shaking and colliding: Middle Dutch schokken, "to push, jolt, shake," or Middle French choquer, "to collide with, clash," with a Germanic root for moving and trembling behind both. It is used both ways: a train can hit the buffers with a great shock, and barriers are built to absorb shock in general.
- 7Causing intense surprise or horror; strikingly unexpected.
The tabloid ran a shock headline about the celebrity's arrest.
His shock departure left the company without a leader.
Similarsensational, startling, stunning
Note
The noun put to work as an adjective, standing before what it describes: a shock announcement, a shock departure. It cannot be graded. An announcement can be very shocking but never very shock, so when degree matters, shocking is the word to reach for.
- 8
- 9A device in a vehicle's suspension that absorbs impacts from the road surface.
He replaced the rear shock after the rough off-road trip.
Stiff shocks give a sports car its firm, controlled ride.
Similardamper
Note
A clipping of shock absorber, and, as with tires, the plural does most of the work: a truck that rides rough needs new shocks, and LL Cool J's "Back Seat (of My Jeep)" (1993) boasts of giving the Jeep's shocks a hard time. The singular appears when there is only one, like the single, centrally mounted rear shock Cycle World described on a BMW motorcycle in 1994.
- 10A wave of high pressure traveling outward from an explosion or other violent disturbance.
The shock from the supersonic jet rattled windows below.
Seismic shocks radiated outward from the epicenter.
Note
Physicists clip shock wave to shock and then count it freely. Several reflected shocks can enter a bomb core in rapid succession, each one helping to compress it. Expect the clipped form in technical prose, where a writer who said shock wave every time would sound like an outsider.
- 11A life-threatening condition in which the circulatory system fails to deliver enough oxygen to the body's tissues.
The patient slipped into shock as his blood pressure plummeted.
Paramedics watched closely for signs of shock at the scene.
Note
Clinically the word means a failing circulation, not a fright: the tissues are starved of oxygen because the blood cannot bring enough. The phrase in shock serves both this condition and the emotional state. The full name, circulatory shock, removes the doubt when the difference matters.
- 12A thick, bushy mass of hair, or a similar dense tuft of grass or other growth.
She brushed back the heavy shock of hair that kept falling over her eyes.
A pale shock of marsh grass leaned in the wind along the bank.
Similarmop
Note
Almost always a shock of something, and the something is usually hair: a shock of sandy hair, or the shock of hair falling across John's brow in Paul Zindel's The Pigman (1968). The word suggests a thick, unruly mass, close to mop. It shows its origin as a variant of shag more plainly than any other sense.
- 13A strong dose of chlorine or another oxidizing chemical added to a swimming pool to break down contaminants and restore effective chlorine levels.
The pool guy poured a measured dose of shock into the deep end.
Cloudy water usually clears within a day after a good dose of shock.
Note
Pool chemistry treats it as a mass noun: you pour shock, not a shock, and its fuller name is swimming pool shock. Chris Boyette's 2024 report on the BioLab plant fire names dichloroisocyanuric acid (DCCA) as one chemical used to make it. Noun and the pool-treating verb work as a pair: you shock the pool with shock.
- 14To treat a swimming pool with a chemical that moderates its chlorine levels.
Pool owners shock their pools each week during the hottest months.
After heavy rain, the staff shock the public pool to fix the chlorine balance.
- 15
- 16An arrangement of grain sheaves stood upright together in a field to dry; a stook.
Each shock held a dozen sheaves leaning together against the wind.
By dusk the field was dotted with golden shocks of barley.
Similarstook
Note
A harvest word with a history separate from the shock of impact: it comes from a variant of shag, and only the spelling is shared. Thomas Tusser's Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry (1557) has sheaves "on shocks to be by and by set," and in James Thomson's "Autumn" the master "builds up the Shocks." Shocks are set and built, much as a stook is.
- 17To gather cut grain and stand it up in bundles for drying; to stook.
Farmhands shock the barley by hand through the long afternoon.
They shocked the rye into neat rows so it could cure.
Similarstook
- 18A point or boundary where a partial differential equation's solution ceases to be continuous.
The numerical scheme captured a shock forming in the fluid equations.
Near the shock, the computed pressure jumped sharply instead of changing smoothly.
Note
Here the word has left the air for the page. A shock is the place where a solution of a partial differential equation stops being smooth and jumps. Numerical analysts speak of a scheme capturing a shock, and they need no physical impact in view. It is the abstract counterpart of the physicist's shock wave.
- 19To deform a stone's crystal structure through extremely high pressure at moderate temperature, of the kind produced only by hypervelocity impacts, lightning, or nuclear blasts.
Only events like meteor strikes can shock quartz into showing telltale fracture patterns.
Geologists found minerals that a distant nuclear test had shocked decades earlier.
Note
A geologist's verb, and its past participle does the descriptive work: shocked quartz is quartz that bears the marks. The pressures are enormous. In Tim Flannery's Europe: A Natural History (2018), shocking quartz takes more than two gigapascals, against a little over 100,000 pascals of air at sea level. That is why a shocked mineral points to an impact, lightning or a nuclear blast.
- 20To meet with a sudden impact; to collide in a violent encounter.
The opposing hosts shock with such fury that the ground itself seems to tremble.
They saw the moment approach when the two parties would shock together.
1832, Thomas De Quincey, Klosterheim OrNote
Here the verb takes no object: two forces shock, or shock together, as the two parties do in Thomas De Quincey's Klosterheim (1832). It is obsolete, so it belongs to historical or deliberately archaic writing. Modern English says collide or clash, and keeps the old meeting of bodies only in the noun for a heavy impact.
- 21A lot of sixty pieces, used in some Baltic ports for counting loose goods.
The clerk recorded a shock of timber on the bill of lading.
They bought several shocks of staves at the harbor that fall.
Note
A trader's count rather than a farmer's bundle: in some Baltic ports, sixty pieces of loose goods made a shock. It is dated, so it belongs to older commerce rather than current trade. It shares its shaggy origin with the harvest shock but has nothing to do with sheaves.
- 22A small lapdog with a long, shaggy coat, especially a poodle or spitz.
A pampered shock yapped at every visitor who came to the door.
When I read of witty persons, I could not figure them but like the little shock. (translating the German Spitz)
1827, Thomas Carlyle, The Fair-Haired EckbertNote
An obsolete name for a dog, taken from its coat; like a shock of hair, it goes back to shag. Thomas Carlyle used it in The Fair-Haired Eckbert (1827), rendering the German Spitz as "the little shock." Readers will meet it only in older texts. For a present-day dog, poodle or spitz is the word.
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Origin
This comes from Middle Dutch schokken ("to push, jolt, shake") or Middle French choquer ("to collide, clash"), going back through Old Dutch to Proto-Germanic *skukkaną ("to move, shake, tremble"). Its origin is uncertain, but it is perhaps related to the root that gives us "shake."