shunt.
To cause to move (suddenly), as by pushing or shoving; to give a (sudden) start to.
Meaning & usage
To cause to move (suddenly), as by pushing or shoving; to give a (sudden) start to.
To divert to a less important place, position, or state.
To provide with a shunt.
to shunt a galvanometer
To move data in memory to a physical disk.
To divert electric current by providing an alternative path.
To move a train from one track to another, or to move carriages, etc. from one train to another.
To have a minor collision, especially in a motor car.
To divert the flow of a body fluid.
To turn aside or away; to divert.
To carry on arbitrage between the London stock exchange and provincial stock exchanges.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English schonten, schunten (“to jerk, swerve; to dodge, escape”), either: * possibly a back-formation from Middle English schonen (“to avoid, refuse, hate, fear”), from Old English sċunian, sċyniġan; see shun. Or * an alteration of Middle English *schunden, *schynden, from Old English sċyndan, sċendan (“to hasten, hurry”) (as in āsċyndan (“to remove, take away”), from Proto-West Germanic *skundijan, from Proto-Germanic *skundijaną (“to impel, hasten”). * from unrecorded Old English *sċunettan, a derivative of sċunian (“to shun, avoid”). As regards the noun sense, compare Middle English shunt (“swerve; sudden jerk”), derived from the verb.
An act of moving (suddenly), as due to a push or shove.
A connection used as an alternative path between parts of an electrical circuit.
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.
An abnormal passage between body channels.
A passage between body channels constructed surgically as a bypass; a tube inserted into the body to create such a passage.
A switch on a railway used to move a train from one track to another.
A minor collision between vehicles.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English schonten, schunten (“to jerk, swerve; to dodge, escape”), either: * possibly a back-formation from Middle English schonen (“to avoid, refuse, hate, fear”), from Old English sċunian, sċyniġan; see shun. Or * an alteration of Middle English *schunden, *schynden, from Old English sċyndan, sċendan (“to hasten, hurry”) (as in āsċyndan (“to remove, take away”), from Proto-West Germanic *skundijan, from Proto-Germanic *skundijaną (“to impel, hasten”). * from unrecorded Old English *sċunettan, a derivative of sċunian (“to shun, avoid”). As regards the noun sense, compare Middle English shunt (“swerve; sudden jerk”), derived from the verb.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.