shunt

Meanings

1. To cause to move (suddenly), as by pushing or shoving; to give a (sudden) start to.
2. To divert to a less important place, position, or state.
3. To provide with a shunt.
4. To move data in memory to a physical disk.
5. To divert electric current by providing an alternative path.
6. To move a train from one track to another, or to move carriages, etc. from one train to another.
7. To have a minor collision, especially in a motor car.
8. To divert the flow of a body fluid.
9. To turn aside or away; to divert.
10. To carry on arbitrage between the London stock exchange and provincial stock exchanges.

1. An act of moving (suddenly), as due to a push or shove.
2. A connection used as an alternative path between parts of an electrical circuit.
3. 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.
4. An abnormal passage between body channels.
5. A passage between body channels constructed surgically as a bypass; a tube inserted into the body to create such a passage.
6. A switch on a railway used to move a train from one track to another.
7. A minor collision between vehicles.

Etymology

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.