shocked

1. 1
   adjective

   Surprised, startled, confused, or taken aback, especially when also feeling indignant.

   Neighbors were shocked to learn the quiet accountant had embezzled millions.

   He gave her a shocked look when she suggested skipping the wedding entirely.

   Similarstunned, appalled, astonished, horrified, startled

   Oppositeunsurprised, unfazed

2. 2
   verb

   Past tense and past participle of shock.

   Rising prices shocked shoppers across the country last year.

   Investigators were shocked by the conditions they found inside the factory.

   Note

   Past and participle share one spelling, and the participle does double duty. With have it forms the perfect (has shocked); with be it forms the passive (was shocked), where it slides easily into the adjective. The verb behind it ranges further than the adjectives do. Pool owners shock a pool with chemicals to manage its chlorine, and an obsolete intransitive use meant to collide violently.

3. 3
   adjective

   Subjected to a jolt of electric current passing through the body or another object.

   The shocked technician was treated for burns where the current entered his arm.

   Biologists revived the shocked fish after counting them during the river survey.

   Note

   A sense where the superlative counts jolts, not feelings. Popular Science in 1931 called Dr. Kurt Urban, working from a lightningproof cabin on Mt. Generoso, the "most shocked man in the world." That double reading is the hazard here. The bare adjective rarely signals electricity by itself, so the surrounding sentence usually has to name the current to keep it apart from the sense of surprise.

4. 4
   adjective

   In a dangerous medical state in which the circulation fails to supply the body's tissues with enough blood and oxygen.

   Paramedics treated the shocked crash victim for dangerously low blood pressure.

   A shocked patient may appear pale, clammy, and confused.

   Note

   On a ward the adjective describes a body, not a feeling. "The patient is shocked" means the circulation is failing, whatever the patient's mood. Clinicians sort the condition by its cause: hypovolemic, cardiogenic, distributive or obstructive. Only context separates this use from the everyday sense of surprise, so a careful medical writer avoids the bare adjective wherever a lay reader might hear astonishment.

5. 5
   adjective

   Affected, altered, or transformed by the passage of one or more shock waves.

   Geologists identified shocked quartz in samples taken from the impact site.

   The telescope detected glowing, shocked gas where the supernova blast wave swept through the cloud.

   Note

   Its signature phrase is shocked quartz, a mineral whose crystal structure still records the passage of a shock wave. Such a wave compresses and heats material faster than it can respond elastically. The damage it leaves, such as planar deformation in a crystal, is diagnostic. The adjective sits before its noun (shocked quartz, shocked gas) and carries no trace of the emotional meaning.

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