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
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 Detractors, like me, shudder at its lack of tangible existence or government backing and its tsunamic volatility.—Larry Light, Forbes, 11 Feb. 2024 With shuddering booms and bursts of light, its interceptor missiles knocked down one Russian missile after another.—Marc Santora, New York Times, 6 Jan. 2024 Spooky season has long tapped into humans' deepest fears, and the creepy, crawling, and chittering creatures can make even the strongest of us shudder with disgust, especially in numbers.—Sarah Sprague, EW.com, 19 Oct. 2023 Characters who should be used to constant surveillance of a documentary crew — remember, the show is an Office-style mockumentary — still shudder in fear over Ava’s potential threat to their privacy in the workplace.—Vulture, 11 Jan. 2024
Noun
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 Related article Trump’s incendiary NATO remarks send very real shudders through Europe
Wang may see more success in stabilizing relations with individual EU member states interested in boosting economic ties — and those looking with uncertainty at the impending US elections, according to observers.—Simone McCarthy, CNN, 19 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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