shock1
/ʃɒk
/noun
1A sudden upsetting or surprising event or experience: it was a shock to face such hostile attitudes...
- It's a bit of a shock to experience the reality of the cruise liner rather than the fantasy - especially when the reality is just as fantastic in its own way.
- And so nobody else has to go through this experience and the shock initially when that happens.
- However, due to the shock of the experience and the upset caused to the young boy, the pair cut their holiday short and returned home.
1.1A feeling of disturbed surprise resulting from a sudden upsetting event: her death gave us all a terrible shock [mass noun]: her eyes opened wide in shock...
- Devlin caught it instantly, wearing a look of utter shock on his face.
- Sputtering, he broke the surface, a look of utter shock on his face.
- Today was… pay day… and I got the biggest shock of my life.
Synonyms
fright, scare, jolt, start, state of agitation/perturbation, distress, consternation, panic
informal turn
1.2A disturbance causing instability in an economy: trading imbalances caused by the two oil shocks...
- In the past, when India was an insulated economy, big oil shocks dented the country's national income and household savings.
- In part, the persistence reflected what was thought to be the special, and transitory, impacts from the initial oil shocks to the economy.
- The problem is exacerbated by the fact that Europe and Japan are also slowing, in the first concerted downturn since the oil shocks of the 1970s.
1.3 short for electric shock. the home-made lighting gave my father a shock when he touched the aquarium...
- No shocks occurred after medical therapy was optimized.
- These electrodes serve a dual function: recording the electrocardiogram and giving a shock if indicated.
- Automated external defibrillators offer lifesaving shocks to the heart
2 [mass noun] An acute medical condition associated with a fall in blood pressure, caused by such events as loss of blood, severe burns, allergic reaction, or sudden emotional stress, and marked by cold, pallid skin, irregular breathing, rapid pulse, and dilated pupils: he died of shock due to massive abdominal haemorrhage...
- Hypovolaemic shock follows major blood loss which may be caused by trauma or during surgery.
- Contraindications to the vaccines can be as severe as allergic shock, collapse, seizures, permanent brain injury or death.
- This type of treatment must only be carried out under close supervision from a doctor because of the risk that it may cause a serious allergic reaction called anaphylactic shock.
Synonyms
trauma, a state of shock, traumatism, prostration, stupor, stupefaction, collapse, breakdown
3A violent shaking movement caused by an impact, explosion, or tremor: earthquake shocks [mass noun]: rackets today don’t bend or absorb shock the way wooden rackets do...
- Peeling himself off the disgusting plastic cover, Dylan shook the shock of the impact from his head and quickly regained his senses.
- They are almost certainly unsafe, as they cannot absorb the shock of an impact, even at slow speeds.
- A very simple answer would probably be to absorb the shock of impact.
Synonyms
vibration, shaking movement, reverberation, shake, jolt, jar, jarring, jerk;
bump, impact, blow, collision, crash, clash
4 short for shock absorber.We just didn't have enough in the budget to fix the Charger if an axle broke or the shocks went out....
- A country with bad roads does not require ceramic engines; it needs vehicles with rugged axles and shocks.
- Improved suspension parts ranging from bushings to springs, shocks and tires make this vehicle a stand out in terms of handling and ride quality.
verb
1 [with object] Cause (someone) to feel surprised and upset: she was shocked at the state of his injuries...
- She was visibly upset, and it shocked me, watching her.
- But this week, when he visited, he was shocked and deeply upset to find his beloved wife's grave had been used as a dumping ground for the earth which had been removed from a next door grave.
- We had a meeting to discuss the figures and people were shocked and surprised.
1.1Offend the moral feelings of; outrage: the revelations shocked the nation...
- He projected an unpretentious, open image, and his reputation for moral rectitude became a crucial asset for a nation still shocked by the Watergate scandal.
- While others were quite shocked or even offended by the waitress's behaviour, I was very amused.
- I believe that future generations will be shocked and outraged that it took us so long.
Synonyms
appal, horrify, scandalize, outrage, repel, revolt, disgust, nauseate, sicken, offend, give offence to, traumatize, make someone's blood run cold, distress, upset, perturb, disturb, disquiet, unsettle, discompose, agitate;
stun, rock, stagger, astound, astonish, amaze, startle, surprise, dumbfound, daze, shake, shake up, jolt, set someone back on their heels, take aback, throw, unnerve, disconcert, bewilder
1.2 [no object] Experience outrage: he shocked so easily...
- They have decades of experience and aren't shocked easily but they are becoming more and more disillusioned with present day Ireland.
- The former Army colour sergeant who has served in the Middle and Far East with the Royal Marines and Royal Military Police, is not easily shocked.
- Not for the easily shocked, his four-letter tirades - which prompted one walk-out - were interspersed by a spate of ingenious gags.
2Affect with physiological shock, or with an electric shock: if a patient is deeply shocked, measurement of blood pressure may be difficult...
- Implanted in the chest, the ICD is a small electronic device which shocks the heart back into a healthy rhythm if it detects an abnormal heartbeat.
- The electric current shocks the sweat glands, and they stop producing sweat temporarily.
- Patients who remain shocked after 3 litres of intravenous fluid usually have continued bleeding and require urgent laparotomy.
3 [no object] archaic Collide violently: carriage after carriage shocked fiercely against the engine
Phrases
short, sharp shock
shock horror!
Derivatives
shockability
- I thought Edinburgh Fringe audiences were way beyond shockability.
- Some people have written that our work has a shockability value, but I never think that is the case.
- Curiously enough, women seldom show any signs of timidity or shockability on the battlefield.
shockable
- They take you back to a time when it was still possible to be transported into another world - a time when you half-believed in magic, and remained infinitely shockable.
- A reliable narrator, I would suggest, is an intelligent, shockable, conscientious and perceptive, human being.
- In front of as many shockable adults as possible.
Origin
Mid 16th century: from French choc (noun), choquer (verb), of unknown origin. The original senses were 'throw (troops) into confusion by charging at them' and 'an encounter between charging forces', giving rise to the notion of 'sudden violent blow or impact'.
The shock that now means ‘a sudden upsetting event or experience’ came from French choc in the mid 16th century with the sense ‘an encounter between two charging forces or jousters’, and in English it started life as a military term. Shocking meaning ‘very bad’ is first found at the end of the 18th century, in a collection of letters called The Paget Papers: ‘Shocking Weather since you left’. A modern short, sharp shock is likely to be a brief but harsh custodial sentence imposed on offenders in an attempt to discourage them from committing further offences. At the Conservative Party Conference in 1979 the then Home Secretary William Whitelaw had proposed this as a form of corrective treatment for young offenders. He was quoting from The Mikado (1885) by Gilbert and Sullivan: ‘Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock, / From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block.’ An unkempt or thick shock of hair probably did not get its name from its shock value. The word originally referred to a dog with long shaggy hair—the poodle was a typical shock dog, though the term is long obsolete. It may be the same as earlier shough, a lapdog said to have originated in Iceland. Shakespeare in Macbeth wrote of ‘spaniels, curs, shoughs’.
Rhymes
shock2
/ʃɒk/noun
A group of twelve sheaves of grain placed upright and supporting each other to allow the grain to dry and ripen.This accumulation of the bundles in the field was a big help for the manual labor which is what it took to assemble grain shocks from all those bundles!...
- The grain shocks would be off-loaded into the thrashing machines.
- The field of wheat is well in the foreground, diversified and defined by the shocks of grain to the right.
verb [with object]
Arrange (sheaves of grain) in a shock: the grain is shocked in the field after it is cut...
- Michael showed me how to cut oats with the horse-drawn grain binder and shock the bundles to dry.
- One story accounts that Thomas refused to go to the fort until after his grain was shocked.
- During harvest time they were shocking bundles of grain and hauling them to the threshing outfit and pitching them into the separator.
Origin
Middle English: perhaps from Middle Dutch, Middle Low German schok, of unknown origin.
shock3
/ʃɒk/noun
An unkempt or thick mass of hair: a man with a shock of ginger hair...
- He is handsome, with high cheekbones, a strong chin, and a shock of thick hair, and he stares with a slight frown at something in the distance.
- He had a thick shock of dark brown hair, with a little gray peeking in around his temples and just above his ears.
- He has a shock of thick snow-blond hair that is certain to attract the others in white.
Synonyms
mass, mane, mop, thatch, head, crop, bush, cloud, frizz, fuzz, foam, curls, tangle, chaos, cascade, quiff, halo
Origin
Mid 17th century: origin uncertain; compare with obsolete shough, denoting a breed of lapdog. The word originally denoted a dog with long shaggy hair, and was then used as an adjective meaning 'unkempt, shaggy'. The current sense dates from the early 19th century.