shake

The act of shaking or being shaken; tremulous or back-and-forth motion.

Noun

  1. The act of shaking or being shaken; tremulous or back-and-forth motion.
    • The cat gave the mouse a shake.
    • She replied in the negative, with a shake of her head.
  2. A twitch, a spasm, a tremor.
    • And when the princely Perſean Diadem, Shall ouerweigh his wearie witleſſe head, And fall like mellowed fruit, with ſhakes of death, In faire Perſea noble Tamburlain Shall be my Regent, and remaine as King: - c....
  3. A dance popular in the 1960s in which the head, limbs, and body are shaken.
    • The snake did the frug, the monkey did the shake. The crowd, mostly young couples, tourists and kids, loved it. - 1969, Allen V. Ross, Vice in Bombay, London: Tallis Press, page 52:
  4. A milkshake.
  5. A beverage made by adding ice cream to a (usually carbonated) drink; a float.
  6. Shake cannabis, small, leafy fragments of cannabis that gather at the bottom of a bag of marijuana.
  7. An adulterant added to cocaine powder.
    • […] most suppliers will allow up to 120 grams of shake to a kilo, or 12 percent; kilo-level buyers are usually unhappy if they find more. - 1989, Terry Williams, chapter 2, in The Cocaine Kids, Reading, MA:...
  8. A crack or split between the growth rings in wood.
  9. A fissure in rock or earth.
  10. A type of wooden shingle originally made from split timber.
    • There is a comet's tail of spilled cream across the cedar shakes and he will have to climb down for the turpentine. - 2003, Janette Turner Hospital, Due Preparations for the Plague, A&R Classics, published 2014, page 4:
  11. Instant, second. (Especially in two shakes.)
    • “And do you realize that in a few shakes I've got to show up at dinner and have Mrs Cream being very, very kind to me? It hurts the pride of the Woosters, Jeeves.” - 1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter XXI, in...
  12. One of the staves of a hogshead or barrel taken apart.
    • Empty casks are[…]taken to pieces, and the staves closely packed up in a cylindrical form, constituting what are called shakes or packs - 1820, William Scoresby, An Account of the Arctic Regions:

Origin

From Middle English schaken, from Old English sċeacan, sċacan (“to shake”), from Proto-West Germanic *skakan, from Proto-Germanic *skakaną (“to shake, swing, escape”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)keg-, *(s)kek- (“to jump, move”). Cognate with Scots schake, schack (“to shake”), West Frisian schaekje (“to shake”), Dutch schaken (“to elope, make clean, shake”), Low German schaken (“to move, shift, push, shake”) and schacken (“to shake, shock”), Old Norse skaka (“to shake”), Norwegian Nynorsk skaka (“to shake”), Swedish skaka (“to shake”), Danish skage (“to shake”), Dutch schokken (“to shake, shock”), Russian скака́ть (skakátʹ, “to jump”). More at shock.

Forms

shakes

Related

knot

Derived

antishake brace of shakes camera shake cup shake Danbury shakes elbow shake fair shake fair shake of the sauce bottle footshake freakshake Gen Z shake give one's head a shake handshake headshake health shake in a brace of shakes in a couple of shakes in a few shakes in two shakes in two shakes of a cow's tail in two shakes of a dog's tail in two shakes of a duck's tail in two shakes of a lamb's tail microshake

Verb

  1. To cause (something) to move rapidly in opposite directions alternatingly.
    • The earthquake shook the building.
    • He shook the can of soda for thirty seconds before delivering it to me, so that, when I popped it open, soda went everywhere.
    • Meanwhile Nanny Broome was recovering from her initial panic and now 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...
  2. To move (one's head) from side to side, especially to indicate refusal, reluctance, or disapproval.
    • Shaking his head, he kept repeating “No, no, no”.
    • I became alſo a reproch vnto them: when they looked vpon me, they ſhaked their heads. - 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Psalms 109:25, column 1:
  3. To move or remove by agitating; to throw off by a jolting or vibrating motion.
    • to shake fruit down from a tree
    • […]Shake off the golden ſlumber of repoſe;[…] - c. 1607–1608 (date written), William Shakespeare, [George Wilkins?], The Late, and Much Admired Play, Called Pericles, Prince of Tyre. […], London: […] [William White and...
    • But indeed this Shame was a bold Villain; I could ſcarce ſhake him out of my company; [...] - 1680, John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World, to That which is to Come: […], 5th edition, Edinburgh: […] Iohn...
  4. To disturb emotionally; to shock.
    • Her father’s death shook her terribly.
    • He was shaken by what had happened.
    • Since the launch early last year of […] two Silicon Valley start-ups offering free education through MOOCs, massive open online courses, the ivory towers of academia have been shaken to their foundations. University...

    Synonyms: traumatize

  5. To lose, evade, or get rid of (something).
    • I can’t shake the feeling that I forgot something.
  6. To move from side to side.
    • She shook with grief.
    • The slightest effort made the patient cough. He would stand leaning on a stick and holding a hand to his side, and when the paroxysm had passed it left him shaking. - 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XXIII,...

    Synonyms: shiver tremble

  7. To shake hands.
    • OK, let’s shake on it.
  8. To dance.
    • She was shaking it on the dance floor.
  9. To give a tremulous tone to; to trill.
    • to shake a note in music
  10. To threaten to overthrow.
    • The experience shook my religious belief.
    • The story of Ms. He and her mother began in the early 1960s, shortly before the Cultural Revolution shook China. - 2014 January 20, Didi Kirsten Tatlow, “‘She. Herself. Naked.': The Art of He Chengyao”, in The New York...
  11. To be agitated; to lose firmness.

Forms

shakes shaking shook shaked shooketh shaken shooken

Synonyms

jiggle quake shag shake tremble vibrate wiggle

Hypernyms

move

Hyponyms

judder quaver quiver rock palpitate shiver shudder thrill

Related

spasm wriggle sway

Derived

ashake atshake beshake bone-shaking forshake make shit shake more than one can shake a stick at more than you can shake a stick at outshake overshake reshake shakable shakeable shake a cloth in the wind shake a leg shake-a-leg shake and bake shake 'n bake shake a stick at shake down shakefork shake hands shake hands with the unemployed shake in one's boots