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shunt

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shunt

  • /ʃʌnt/ UK
  • /ʃʌnt/ Canada, US
  • /ʃənt/ Canada, US
  • /ʃant/ Australia
  • /ʃʊnt/ Northern England

Rhymes with -ʌnt

Where it comes from

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.

verb shunts · shunting · shunted

  1. transitive To cause to move (suddenly), as by pushing or shoving; to give a (sudden) start to. For we are all shunting—shunting—shunting / We're all shunting in this queer world of ours. / Nations are shunted like to our railway carriages: / As Napoleon shunted la belle France into war; / Princes are shunted into royal marriages; / Kings and Queens are shunted just like a railway car.

    Similar: shove

  2. transitive To divert to a less important place, position, or state. Here in England it is, thank God! the custom for us to shunt ourselves off the grand trunk railroad of business, in tearing up and down which our lives are mainly passed, into some quiet siding once every year. […] [W]hen July is running into August, and everything is breaking up, you feel that your
  3. transitive To provide with a shunt. to shunt a galvanometer
  4. transitive To move data in memory to a physical disk. A momentary power spike had caused a blip, forcing the backup system to shunt Carella's current work into a safety file. It was standard operating procedure, a decision made by the online computer itself.
  5. transitive To divert electric current by providing an alternative path. The method of running an electric motor herein set out, which consists in starting the motor with the two halves of its armature in series with a resistance in a two-pole field, then gradually cutting out the resistance, then including the resistance and shunting one-half the motor, then opening the
  6. transitive To move a train from one track to another, or to move carriages, etc. from one train to another. Porter, run over while shunting a luggage train, in consequence of his getting entangled in shunting-rope.
  7. UK, informal, transitive To have a minor collision, especially in a motor car. The main argument for the use of culpability as a categorizer is that some accidents can be said to be independent of the behaviour of at least one of the drivers, for example, being shunted when having stopped for a red light (in a slow and controlled manner, at least).
  8. transitive To divert the flow of a body fluid. There are times when one has no alternative other than to attempt to shunt the cerebrospinal fluid into the pleural cavity, a potential space, which may occasionally be capable of absorbing the fluid.
  9. UK, dialectal, obsolete, transitive To turn aside or away; to divert.
  10. UK, historical To carry on arbitrage between the London stock exchange and provincial stock exchanges.

noun shunts

  1. An act of moving (suddenly), as due to a push or shove. Blindside loosie Jerome Kaino got [Conor] Murray after he'd kicked in the 10th minute, then the halfback hurt a wrist after Brodie Retallick gave him a shunt.
  2. A connection used as an alternative path between parts of an electrical circuit. The sensibility of a galvanometer may be varied in a very simple manner by the use of what is termed a shunt. A shunt is a resistance coil, or coil of fine wire used to divert some definite portion of a current, taking it past a galvanometer instead of through its coils.
  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. In length, this gun was the same as the French, but weighed 9 cwt. less. It was rifled in six grooves on the shunt plan, in the form in which it has been generally applied to large guns, with the difference that some of the angles of the grooving were rounded off. […] To impede fouling, a slightly g
  4. An abnormal passage between body channels. Portosystemic shunts can be congenital or acquired with congenital PSS commonly comprising a single communicating vessel between the portal venous circulation and the systemic circulation via the caudal vena cava or azygos vein. Of congenital shunts, 66–75% are extrahepatic. Intrahepatic portosystem
  5. A passage between body channels constructed surgically as a bypass; a tube inserted into the body to create such a passage. We present an extremely rare case of delayed and combined ventriculoperitoneal shunt blockage, viscus perforation and migration into the urethra manifested by a repeated urinary tract infection. This was discovered six months after the shunt was inserted.
  6. A switch on a railway used to move a train from one track to another. These improvements consist, firstly, in a novel construction of apparatus to be attached to or applied upon railways, at those parts termed switches, shunts, or moveable rails, which are commonly used for transferring engines, carriages, or trains, from one line of rails to another, as occasion may
  7. UK, informal A minor collision between vehicles. At the first race in Brazil, I became involved in a four-car shunt. I won't go into too much detail now, except to say that the accident had nothing to do with me. […] Everyone else was avoiding the accident when [Jos] Verstappen lost control on the grass, came right into me – and off we all went. I

Translations

Every language

verb to divert to a less important place, position, or state

中文分流 fēnliú
Françaisparquer, reléguer
Italianoshuntare
العربيةحَوَّلَ ḥawwala

verb to divert electric current

Françaisdétourner le courant électrique, dériver
Русскийшунти́ровать šuntírovatʹ

verb to move a train or carriages

日本語待避する taihi suru
Françaisaiguiller, manœuvrer
Deutschrangieren
Italianosmistare
Русскийманеври́ровать manevrírovatʹ

verb to have a minor collision

Françaisaccrocher, avoir un accrochage

verb to divert the flow of a body fluid

Русскийшунтировать šuntirovatʹ

verb (obsolete) to turn aside or away

Deutschverlagern

noun electric connection

Portuguêsderivação
Françaisdérivation
DeutschShunt, Nebenschlusswiderstand
Italianoderivatore, derivazione
Românășunt
Русскийшунт šunt

noun surgical bypass

Françaispontage
DeutschShunt
Italianocortocircuito, deviazione
Русскийшунт šunt

noun railway switch

日本語ポイント pointo
Françaisaiguillage

noun minor collision between vehicles

Françaisaccrochage

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Cite this
MLA

"shunt." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/shunt. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026.

APA

shunt. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/shunt

Chicago

"shunt." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/shunt.

BibTeX
@misc{shunt_2026,
  title = {shunt},
  howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://micwyn.com/word/shunt},
  urldate = {2026-11-06}
}