panic

Overwhelming fear or fright, often affecting groups of people or animals; (countable) an instance of this; a fright, a scare.

Adjective

  1. Alternative letter-case form of Panic (“pertaining to the Greek god Pan”).

    Synonyms: Pandean panical

  2. )
    • All things were there in a diſordered confuſion, and in a confuſed furie, vntill ſuch time as by prayers and ſacrifices they had appeaſed the wrath of their Gods. They call it to this day, the P[a]nike terror. - 1603,...
    • So long as Epaminondas was captaine general of the Thebans, there was never ſeene in his campe any of theſe ſudden fooliſh frights, without any certeine cauſe, which they call Panique Terrores. - 1603, Plutarch, “The...
    • But why dwell I ſo intolerable long about Tolerations, I hope my feares are but panick, againſt which I have a double cordiall. - 1647, Theodore de la Guard [pseudonym; Nathaniel Ward], The Simple Cobler of Aggawam in...

    Synonyms: panical

    1. Of fear, fright, etc: overwhelming or sudden.

    2. Pertaining to or resulting from overwhelming fear or fright.

      • [H]e perceived how that many women followed his ſouldiers, ſome being their wives, and ſome wanting nothing to make them ſo but marriage, […] The King coming to a great river, after his men and the wagons were paſſed...
      • No Dangers threatned, but they ſmil'd to meet The pannick French-men trembling at their Feet. - 1705, [Daniel Defoe], The D[utch] Deputies. A Satyr, London: [s.n.], →OCLC, page 5:

Origin

The adjective is borrowed from Middle French panique, a word itself borrowed from Ancient Greek πανικός (panikós, “pertaining to Pan”); Pan, the Greek god of fields and woods, was believed to be the source of mysterious sounds that caused contagious, groundless fear in herds and crowds, or in people in lonely spots. Adjective sense 3 (“pertaining to or resulting from overpowering fear or fright”) is partly an attributive use of the noun. The noun is derived from the adjective, while the verb is derived from the noun. Verb sense 1.3 (“to highly amuse, entertain, or impress (an audience watching a performance or show”) is derived from noun sense 4 (“a highly amusing or entertaining performer, performance, or show”).

Forms

more panic most panic panick

Derived

panical

Noun Entry 2

  1. Overwhelming fear or fright, often affecting groups of people or animals; (countable) an instance of this; a fright, a scare.
    • She wakened in sharp panic, bewildered by the grotesquerie of some half-remembered dream in contrast with the harshness of inclement fact, drowsily realizing that since she had fallen asleep it had come on to rain...
    • There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind, and as we drove away Tom was feeling the hot whips of panic. His wife and his mistress, until an hour ago secure and inviolate, were slipping precipitately from...
    • Meanwhile Nanny Broome was recovering from her initial panic and seemed anxious to make up for any kudos she might have lost, by exerting her personality to the utmost. She took the policeman's helmet and placed it on a...
  2. Ellipsis of kernel panic (“on Unix-derived operating systems: an action taken by the operating system when it cannot recover from a fatal error”); (by extension) any computer system crash.
    • If your new driver has an error that panics the system when you load the driver, then the system will panic again when it tries to reboot after the panic. The system will continue the cycle of panic, reboot, and panic...
  3. A rapid reduction in asset prices due to broad efforts to raise cash in anticipation of such prices continuing to decline.
    • "I thought you inherited your money." "I did, old sport," he said automatically, "but I lost most of it in the big panic—the panic of the war." - 1925, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, chapter 5, in The Great Gatsby, New...
    • "There is sort of a panic going on, and that is not what ought to be," [Chris] Dodd, a Democrat from Connecticut, said at a press conference in Washington today. "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were never bottom feeders in...
  4. A highly amusing or entertaining performer, performance, or show; a riot, a scream.

Forms

panics

Derived

antipanic gay panic gay panic defense homosexual panic defense kernel panic moral panic panican panic attack panic bar panic-bought panic button panic buyer panic disorder panic door panicful panicky panicless paniclike panicmonger panicmongering panicogenesis panicogenic panic party panic rev

Noun Entry 3

  1. Foxtail millet or Italian millet (Setaria italica), the second-most widely grown species of millet.
  2. A plant of the genus Panicum, or of similar plants of other genera (especially Echinochloa and Setaria) formerly included within Panicum; panicgrass or panic grass.
    • [folio 76, recto] Panicum […] hathe no name in Engliſh yet⸝ but it may well be called panick after yͤ Latin. Panik hath leues lyke vnto a rede when it commeth firſt furth. […] [folio 76, verso] Dioſcorides writeth yͭ...
    • There be ſundrie ſorts of Panick, although of the ancients there hathe beene ſet downe but two, that is to ſay, the wilde or fielde Panick, and the garden or manured Panick: […] - 1597, John Gerarde [i.e., John Gerard],...
  3. The edible grain obtained from one of the above plants.
    • Pannick ſtoppeth the laske as Millet doth, being boiled (as Plinie reporteth) in Goates milk and drunke twiſe in a day. Bread made of Pannick nouriſheth little, and is cold and dry, verie brittle, hauing in it neither...

Origin

From Late Middle English panik, panyk (“plant of the genus Panicum”), borrowed from Latin pānicum, pānīcum (“foxtail millet or Italian millet (Setaria italica); plant of the genus Panicum, panicgrass”); further etymology uncertain, probably either from pānis (“bread; loaf”) (possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *peh₂- (“to graze; to protect; to shepherd”)) or pānus (“ear of millet; thread wound on a bobbin”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *(s)penh₁- (“to twist; to weave”)) + -cum (suffix forming neuter nouns). Doublet of bannock and bonnag

Forms

panics panick

Related

panicum Panicum

Derived

hairy panic panicgrass panic grass

Verb

  1. To cause (someone) to feel panic (“overwhelming fear or fright”); also, to frighten (someone) into acting hastily.
    • He told us he'd almost stepped on Ellen's body that night—dead and stiffening. Then I'd come round the corner and hailed him, and that panicked him. - 1927 October, Rudyard Kipling, “Fairy-Kist”, in Limits and Renewals,...
  2. To cause (a computer system) to crash.
    • If your new driver has an error that panics the system when you load the driver, then the system will panic again when it tries to reboot after the panic. The system will continue the cycle of panic, reboot, and panic...
  3. To highly amuse, entertain, or impress (an audience watching a performance or show).
  4. To feel panic, or overwhelming fear or fright; to freak out, to lose one's head.
    • I don't want you to be hopeful, I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day and then I want you to act. - 2019 January 25, 5:22 from the start, in Our House is on Fire, spoken by Greta Thunberg,...
  5. Of a computer system: to crash.

Forms

panics panicking panicked

Derived

panic-buy panic-buyer panic buying panicked panicker panicking panickingly panic-sell panic selling