shunt

Etymology

From Middle English shunten, schunten, schonten, schounten, an alteration of shunden, *schunden, *schinden, from Old English scyndan, scendan (“to hurry, hasten”) (as in āscyndan (“to take away, remove”), from Proto-Germanic *skundijaną (“to drive, push, compel, rush”). Cognate with Middle High German schünden (“to urge, compel, irritate”), Danish skynde (“to hasten, hurry, speed”), Swedish skynda (“to hurry, hasten, scurry, scuttle”), Norwegian skynde (“to hurry, rush”), Icelandic skynda, skunda (“to hasten”). Outside Germanic, compare Albanian shkund (“to shake, swig”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ʃʌnt/
• Rhymes: -ʌnt

Verb

shunt (third-person singular simple present shunts, present participle shunting, simple past and past participle shunted)

1. (obsolete, Britain, dialect) To turn away or aside.
2. (obsolete, Britain, dialect) To cause to move suddenly; to give a sudden start to; to shove.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Ash to this entry?)

3. To move a train from one track to another, or to move carriages, etc. from one train to another.
4. To divert electric current by providing an alternative path.
5. To divert the flow of a body fluid using surgery.
6. To move data in memory to a physical disk.
7. (informal, Britain) To have a minor collision, especially in a motor car.
8. To provide with a shunt.

   to shunt a galvanometer

9. To divert to a less important place, position or state

Noun

shunt (plural shunts)

1. A switch on a railway
2. A connection used as an alternative path between parts of an electric circuit
3. A passage between body channels constructed surgically as a bypass
4. (informal, Britain) A minor collision
5. (firearms) The shifting of the studs on a projectile from the deep to the shallow sides of the grooves in its discharge from a shunt gun.

Anagrams

• Hunts, hunts