Verb
The old car shuddered to a halt.
The house shuddered as a plane flew overhead. Noun
a shudder ran through him as he stepped outside into the snow
Recent Examples on the Web
Verb
Watkins' aquatic fun comes to a shuddering halt when she’s attacked by a monstrous shark and subsequently killed.—Edward Segarra, USA TODAY, 13 May 2024 Behind him, the pack trembled and shuddered like a nervous pony as its onboard computers automatically corrected his attitude with tiny whispers of gas from its two dozen nitrogen jets.—Adam Higginbotham, Smithsonian Magazine, 8 May 2024 John, Paul, George, and Ringo seemed to shudder every time it got mentioned.—Rob Sheffield, Rolling Stone, 7 May 2024 For one thing, data-privacy advocates and fans of old-school human driving will likely shudder at the idea of centralized monitoring and control over streets and roads, despite potential upsides.—IEEE Spectrum, 6 May 2024 In midtown Manhattan, traffic grew louder as motorists blared their horns on shuddering streets.—Jennifer Peltz, The Christian Science Monitor, 5 Apr. 2024 In midtown Manhattan, the usual cacophony of traffic grew louder as motorists blared their horns on momentarily shuddering streets.—Jennifer Peltz, Fortune, 5 Apr. 2024 My leg trembled so hard on the pedal the truck shuddered.—Maggie Slepian, Longreads, 2 Apr. 2024 With his head in his hands, fingers scraping through the thick, unruly brown locks, and breath shuddering from the tight line of his lips.—Lizz Schumer, Peoplemag, 26 Mar. 2024
Noun
By all accounts — and by the shudders of enormous bombs hitting the ground not far from the evacuation point — the two sides are now locked in heavy fighting over a string of villages just a few miles inside Ukrainian territory.—Jeffrey Gettleman Emile Ducke, New York Times, 11 May 2024 Some have treated the NOR movement with disbelief and shudders — or, as those who work in it well know, compared it to the 1973 movie Soylent Green, set in a future where the deceased are ground up and made into food to compensate for an overpopulated planet.—David Browne, Rolling Stone, 22 Apr. 2024 With a shudder, the husband threw off the wife’s hand.—Joyce Carol Oates, The New Yorker, 15 Apr. 2024 The aluminum shudders of the dome are opened for viewing by pulling a rope.—Jeff Suess, The Enquirer, 24 Mar. 2024 In typical Neubauten mode, the music shudders, wobbles, and turns in on itself as the pioneering industrial group clangs rhythms and manipulates the tapes.—Kory Grow, Rolling Stone, 22 Mar. 2024 All three would make my Wisconsinite mother, who cannot abide crust thicker than a dime, shudder.—Jess Fleming, Twin Cities, 8 Feb. 2024 The door into the surveillance room shudders, cutting short anything Anton might have said in reply.—Maureen Lee Lenker, EW.com, 28 Feb. 2024 The news will send a shudder down the spines of AI-phobic workers, and perhaps some of Klarna’s 4,200 employees.—Ryan Hogg, Fortune Europe, 28 Feb. 2024
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'shudder.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Word History
Etymology
Verb
Middle English shoddren; akin to Old High German skutten to shake and perhaps to Lithuanian kutėti to shake up
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