shell shock
A psychiatric condition characterized by fatigue caused by battle, corresponding largely with the current diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Noun
- A psychiatric condition characterized by fatigue caused by battle, corresponding largely with the current diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder.
- There's a condition in combat—most people know it by now. It occurs when a soldier's nervous system has reached the breaking point. In World War I, it was called shell shock. Simple, honest, direct language. Two...
Synonyms: battle fatigue combat fatigue
- A person with the condition.
- I passed through the shell-shock wards and a yard where the "shell-shocks" sat about, dumb, or making queer, foolish noises, or staring with a look of animal fear in their eyes. - 1920, Phillip Gibbs, Now It Can Be...
- Of the 79 officer casualties 10 were "shell-shocks", or about 12 per cent, of the whole. Of the 10 shell-shocks 4 were sent to C.C.S. and 6 to Corps Rest Station. - 1943, Arthur Graham Butler, The Australian Army...
- Most nurses found the helplessness of "the shell shocks" painful and "pitiful." - 2004, Susan Zeiger, In Uncle Sam's Service: Women Workers with the American Expeditionary Force, 1917—1919, page 131:
- A stunning shock.
- "[…]Think of me / With all these psychic shell shocks — first the war, / Its great emotions, then this Elenor." - 2004, Edgar Lee Masters, Barrett Bays: Domesday Book, page 322:
- But while malls killed much of downtown America, they only partially injured New York City. The density of this city guaranteed a less dramatic impact than the shell shocks that crippled so many other cities. - 2010,...
- Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see shell, shock.
- The other was to go on, to the next drink or the bed or the grass outside, where the party-noises ebbed and flowed like shell-shocks and the Southern Cross burnt crookedly above. - 1967, Bernard Share, Inish, page 99:
Origin
Well attested during World War I. Attempts to find attestations that predate that war seem fruitless. The ambiguity of reference to a range of phenomena, from physical concussion due to the explosively loud noise of artillery fire (on both the sending and receiving ends) to psychological reactions to violence and maiming, was present in the term's use from the start. In 21st-century wars there is continued evidence that long, close exposure to the noise of artillery can cause traumatic brain injury even in soldiers who did not take incoming artillery fire. But most discussions of shell shock in World War I concerned combat stress as well.
Forms
Related
Verb
- To stun or debilitate as by a shock.
- It was General du Pont's 'forty-five' which bellowed and thundered and echoed through Fifth avenue, scaring horses and shell shocking pedestrians. - 1919, Bulletin of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical...
- 1999, Brother Gilbert (Phillip F. Cairnes), Harry Rothgerber (editor), Young Babe Ruth, page 146, The crack of the home run that the batsman cherishes shell-shocks the nerves of the pitcher who threw it.
- 2008, Linda Mi-Suk Enos, The Korean Palace of Honolulu, Condensed (6 x 9) Version, page 462, Silently Melissa listened to her mother as she softly convincingly spoke the raw naked truth the best way she knew how without...
Forms
shell shocks shell shocking shell shocked shellshock shell-shock