shunt

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English shunten (“to move suddenly, start aside; to flinch, run away”),^{[2][3][4][5][6][7]} a word of uncertain origin.^{[3][8][9][10]} Many dictionaries take it as perhaps a derivative from Middle English shunen (“to shun”), the ancestor of shun;^{[9][11][4][5][12][10][13][8]} the Middle English Dictionary suggests a back-formation from the past tense of shonen,^[2] and the OED notes that its Middle English senses coincide with some senses of shun and that some recorded past forms may belong to that verb.^[3] Etymonline adds that the form may have been altered under the influence of shot or shut.^[4] Wiktionary also mentions an alteration of an unrecorded Middle English form from Old English sċyndan (“to hasten, hurry”), from Proto-Germanic *skundijaną (“to impel, hasten”).^[1] Shun goes back to Old English scunian (“to run away from, avoid; abhor”), a verb of obscure origin.^[4][3][6] The noun is from the verb.^{[3][10][7][9]}

Earliest recorded meaning

To shy or start aside, as a horse does: before 1250, in the Ancrene Riwle, which warns against being like the timid horse þat schuntes for a schadewe, that shies at a shadow.^[2][3][11]

Semantic evolution

In Middle English the verb meant to start or move suddenly and to shrink away or hang back; from about 1390 it also meant turning away or withdrawing;^[2][3][11] the noun meant a sudden swerve or a drawing back, in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.^[3][4] These senses had died out by the late 18th century,^[3][10] and the word lived on as a provincial verb meaning to push or shove aside, recorded from 1706 in Kersey's edition of Phillips's dictionary;^[3][11][14] the English Dialect Dictionary found it in this sense in Northumberland, Cumberland, Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cheshire, Warwickshire and Herefordshire.^[15] The railways gave it new life: from the 1840s it meant moving a train or carriages from one line to another, and in the earliest quotations it still stood in quotation marks.^[3][4][14] Fitzedward Hall wrote in 1873 that the word, before the railways an obscure provincialism, was now used by everybody in England, figuratively too.^[4] The figurative sense "to sidetrack, get rid of" is recorded from 1858.^[3] Technicians took it up for a circuit that diverts part of an electric current (1863),^[3][11][4] doctors for a route by which blood bypasses its usual path (1923),^[3][11][4] and biochemists for an alternative metabolic pathway (1953).^[3] Motor-racing slang made a shunt a crash, especially a nose-to-tail collision, from 1959.^[3][16][17]

Timeline

• before 1250 – to shy or start aside, in the Ancrene Riwle (obsolete by 1600).^[3][2][11]
• c. 1390 – to turn away, withdraw, run away.^[2][11]
• c. 1400 – to elude a blow (obsolete by 1540); noun, an act of drawing back, in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.^[3]
• 1706 – to push or shove aside; chiefly dialect.^[3][11]
• 1842 – noun, a railway switch.^[3][9][5]
• 1845 – to move a train from the main line to a siding or another line.^[3] Barnhart dates this sense to 1849, Etymonline to 1842.^[11][4]
• 1858 – figurative, to sidetrack; to get rid of.^[3]
• 1863 – noun, a conductor that diverts part of an electric current.^[3][11][4]
• 1923 – in medicine, a route by which blood bypasses its usual course.^[3][11][4]
• 1953 – in biochemistry, an alternative metabolic pathway.^[3]
• 1959 – slang, a motor accident, especially a nose-to-tail collision.^[3]

Meanings

Verb

1. To push or turn something aside or out of the way; to sidetrack: The proposal was shunted aside by the committee.^[5][16][3]
2. To move trains or carriages from one track to another, or from the main line to a siding.^[5][16][3]
3. To divert an electric current, or blood, through a shunt.^[16][5][3]
4. To get rid of something by passing it on to someone else.^[16][17]
5. (motor racing, slang) To crash a car.^[16]
6. (obsolete) To start aside or shy; to shrink away.^[3][10][2]

Noun

1. An act of shunting; a move to one side.^[3][16]
2. (chiefly British) A railway switch.^[5][3]
3. A conductor joining two points of an electric circuit to give a parallel path for part of the current.^[5][16][3]
4. (medicine) A passage, natural or made by surgery, that carries blood from one part of the body to another; a bypass.^[5][16][3]
5. (slang) A car crash, especially a collision between vehicles travelling close behind each other.^[3][16][17]

Word family

• shunter
• unshunted

Related words

• shun

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
7. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
8. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
10. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
12. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
13. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ a b Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
15. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
16. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
17. ^ a b c Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com