c1400 (?c1390) Sir Gawain & Green Knight (1940) l. 2268 Þat oþer schalk wyth a schunt þe schene wyth-haldeȝ.

1862 J. Simmons Railway Traveller's Handy Bk. 12 A thin line in the middle of trains..represents a shunt.

1884 H. Smart From Post to Finish xlvi Damme if ever they persuade me into doing another ‘shunt’.

1886 Pall Mall Gaz. 31 Dec. 1/1 The shunt from the German to the Austrian alliance was due to the desire..to support the Prince of Battenberg in his struggle against Russia.

1898 H. G. Wells Certain Personal Matters 132 All primitive men and most animals swear. It is an emotional shunt.

1901 H. E. Bulwer Gloss. Techn. Terms Bells & Ringing 30 Shunt. In a composition arranged in regular ‘parts’, or ‘divisions’, produced by similar calling, the omission of a ‘call’, or the insertion of an additional one, in order to divert the track of the composition to a corresponding point in another ‘part’; the omission and insertion being termed respectively a ‘shunting omit’, and a ‘shunting call’ (‘bob’ or ‘single’), or simply ‘omit’ and ‘extra’.

1959 in Chambers's Twentieth Cent. Dict. Add.

1967 Economist 11 Feb. 544/3 The characteristic American accident is a multivehicle shunt on a freeway.

1976 J. Wainwright Bastard vii. 91 Mist..happens on motor~ways, and is the cause of multi-car shunt-ups, where radiators kiss bumper bars.

1978 ‘G. Vaughan’ Belgrade Drop vi. 41 ‘Another bloody shunt,’ Yardley groaned. The Zagreb trunk was notorious for accidents.

1863 R. S. Culley Handbk. Pract. Telegr. 99 The ‘shunt’ system can be applied with advantage. The shunt is a wire connecting the two ends of the galvanometer coil.

1884 F. Krohn tr. G. Glaser de Cew Magneto- & Dynamo-electr. Machines (new ed.) 101 Dynamo-machines..with the main circuit, or ‘series’ electro-magnet coils wound on the same arm or limb of the electro-magnet, as contains the ‘shunt’ coils.

1884 F. Krohn tr. G. Glaser de Cew Magneto- & Dynamo-electr. Machines (new ed.) 225 The total resistance of a circuit from which shunt-circuits are taken is less than its own resistance.

1892 T. O'C. Sloane Standard Electr. Dict. (1893) at Shunt Winding A dynamo or motor is shunt-wound when the field magnet winding is in shunt or in parallel with the winding of the armature.

1878 T. A. Edison in N. Amer. Rev. 126 536 To keep wires in proper repair, and give, by switch or shunt arrangement, prompt attention to subscriber No. 923 in New York.

1923 Medicine II. 20 Deficient oxygenation of the arterial blood..caused..by an unaerated shunt of venous blood into arterial.

1923 Medicine II. 33 The readiness with which cyanosis develops or increases, during exercise, in a patient with an unaerated shunt.

1937 C. H. Best & N. B. Taylor Physiol. Basis Med. Pract. xxxv. 581 (caption) A portion of the blood passes through unaerated channels (shunt) from the venous to the arterial system.

1961 Lancet 30 Sept. 728/2 2 patients..had both undergone splenectomy some time before portocaval shunt was performed.

1980 Amer. Speech 55 47 Clamps used to stop blood flow through a shunt when kidney dialysis is initiated.

1953 Jrnl. Bacteriol. 66 17 It has been possible to infer..the existence of a sequence of reactions, the hexosemonophosphate shunt, which may serve in nature as a major pathway for the aerobic breakdown of carbohydrate by filamentous microorganisms.

1964 W. G. Smith Allergy & Tissue Metabolism viii. 85 Supplies of NADPH₂ can be made available by shunting some of the available glucose-6-phosphate into reactions which form ribulose-5-phosphate. This in turn can be converted back to glucose-6-phosphate... The whole process is sometimes referred to as the pentose phosphate shunt.

1967 M. E. Hale Biol. Lichens viii. 118 Insoluble metabolic shunt products often serve as reserve food.

1970 E. J. Ambrose & D. M. Easty Cell Biol. vii. 247 The pentose sugar ribose is formed from glucose by an oxidative pathway known as the hexose monophosphate shunt.

1895 Pract. Electr. Engin. I. 10 Shunt-winding means that one branch of the circuit only encircles the cores.

1878 Telegr. Jrnl. 15 Sept. 375/1 A new galvanometer shunt box.

1893 T. O'C. Sloane Standard Electr. Dict. 483 Shunt Box, a resistance box designed for use as a galvanometer shunt. The box contains a series of resistance coils which can be plugged in or out as required.

1925 Morris Owner's Man. 50 The position of the shunt brush is correctly set relative to the position of the other two brushes before the machine leaves the works.

1881 Nature 6 Oct. 533/2 A generator of electricity of the kind now known as the shunt dynamo.

1916 Standard. Rules Amer. Inst. Electr. Engin. 96 A shunt loaded line is one in which the normal inductance of the circuit has been altered by inductance applied in shunt across the circuit.

1888 Rep. Brit. Assoc. Advancem. Sci. 1887 616 In a shunt machine the current through the coils of the second magnet may be controlled by the addition of a resistance in series with it.

1902 Encycl. Brit. XXVII. 587/1 The second and third classes, namely, series and shunt machines.

1953 E. Molloy Small Motors & Transformers ii. 17 [Differential compounding] is sometimes employed to secure further improvement of the speed characteristic of a shunt machine, in cases where the load is variable.

1883 Jrnl. Soc. Telegraph-engineers & Electricians 12 310 A coiled magneto-machine.., in which we have a magneto-generator acting as a brake, and a shunt motor.

1977 N.Z. Herald 5 Jan. 3/7 And once in Auckland, tied up by traffic lights and other vehicles, he switches over completely to his shunt motor for a quiet, anxiety-free tour of the town.

1893 T. O'C. Sloane Standard Electr. Dict. Shunt Ratio, the coefficient expressing the ratio existing between the current in a shunt and in the apparatus or conductor in parallel with it.

1911 H. M. Hobart Dict. Electr. Engin. (at cited word) In energy meters..furnished with a friction compensation for the low loads there is a tendency of the meter to work with no current in the circuit to which it is connected... This is referred to as ‘shunt running’.

1883 Pall Mall Gaz. 14 Sept. 4/1 The conductor is connected..to a single shunt-wound dynamo machine.

a1250 (?a1200) Ancrene Riwle (Titus) (1963) 81 Ne beo nawt þe skerre hors iliche þat schuntes for a schadewe [a1250 Nero blencheð uor one scheadewe up o ðe heie brugge].

a1400–50 Wars Alex. 180 Sen it is sett to be soo & slipe it ne may, Ne schewid to be na noþire schap, ne we to schount nouthire.

?a1400 Morte Arth. 1055 Thane he dressede one his schelde, schuntes no lengere.

c1400 (?c1390) Sir Gawain & Green Knight (1940) l. 1902 He [the fox attacked with the sword] schunt for þe scharp.

c1400 (?c1390) Sir Gawain & Green Knight (1940) l. 2280 Quoþ G[awayn], ‘I schunt oneȝ, & so wyl I no more’.

c1400 (?c1380) Cleanness l. 605 In þe hyȝe hete..He was schunt to þe schadow vnder schyre leuez.

c1440 York Myst. xlvi. 59 Þei schonte for no schoutis his schappe for to schende it, þei rasid hym on rode.

15.. Song of John Nobody viii, in J. Strype Cranmer (1694) ii. 139 Then I drew me down into a dale, wheras the dumb deer Did shiver for a shower, but I shunted from a freyke.

c1540 (?a1400) Destr. Troy 600 I will shunt for no shame of my shene fader.

c1540 (?a1400) Destr. Troy 10998 Ne shamys you not shalkes to shunt of þe fild.

a1400–50 Wars Alex. 580 In þe same tyme he seuyrd fra þi wambe, þe erd & all þe elementis so egirly schontid.

14.. Tretyce in W. of Henley's Husb. (1890) 47 Yeff your land ly in marres..& it be ereyd to depe at þe secund falowe..Your ploughe shall com to no harde grounde but go schoutyng [? read schonting] all in myrre.

1775 J. Ash New Dict. Eng. Lang. Shunt (v. int. a local word), to give a sudden start.

1858 Sat. Rev. 13 Mar. 261/2 Practically, General Peel is not shunted, but shelved.

1869 ‘W. Bradwood’ The O.V.H. xix Which [horse] had we best shunt?..one's as good as the other to win, but the price makes all the difference.

a1891 J. R. Lowell Old Eng. Dramatists (1892) i. 3 Since then,..my mind has been shunted off upon the track of other duties.

1904 M. Sinclair Div. Fire 255 That two hundred ought to be three thousand, and if it isn't paid I shall have to shunt the business.

1851 Notes & Queries 1st Ser. 3 204/2 At a certain station the parliamentary ‘shunts’ to let the Express pass.

1883 Harper's Mag. Mar. 537/1 There we would wait, and back and shunt and change.

1869 ‘W. Bradwood’ The O.V.H. xix It's no use at all for us two to run against each other, that's flat; our horse shall shunt for your'n, if your'n won't for ours.

1892 G. R. Lowndes Camping Sketches 26 Let's shunt from here.

1873 F. Jenkin Electr. & Magn. (1881) xvi. §3. 235 If a galvanometer with the resistance G be shunted by a shunt of the resistance S, the resistance of the shunted galvanometer will be [etc.].

1878 Telegr. Jrnl. 15 Sept. 376/1 The necessary portion of the current is shunted off from the galvanometer.

1911 H. M. Hobart Dict. Electr. Engin. II. 617/1 A winding which shunts or by-passes a portion of the main supply.

1923 Medicine II. 18 A condition..in patients with congenital perforate septum of the heart, where a fraction of the blood is shunted directly from the right heart to the left without passing through the lungs.

1950 C. H. Best & N. B. Taylor Physiol. Basis Med. Pract. (ed. 5) xxxv. 435/1 Most of the blood is shunted to the arterial side through channels which normally close at, or shortly after, birth.