quake
Americanverb (used without object)
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quakes,
present (3rd person singular)
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quaked,
past participle, past
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quaking
present participle
noun
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quakes
plural
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an earthquake.
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a trembling or tremulous agitation.
verb
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to shake or tremble with or as with fear
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to convulse or quiver, as from instability
noun
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the act or an instance of quaking
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informal short for earthquake
Synonym Usage
See shiver 1.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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quakesimple
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quakessimple
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have quakedperfect
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has quakedperfect
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am quakingprogressive
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are quakingprogressive
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is quakingprogressive
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have been quakingperfect progressive
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has been quakingperfect progressive
Past
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quakedsimple
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had quakedperfect
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was quakingprogressive
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were quakingprogressive
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had been quakingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of quake
First recorded before 900; Middle English; Old English cwacian “to shake, tremble”
Explanation
When you quake, you tremble and shiver. A scary sound in a dark basement might make you quake. To quake is to move rapidly back and forth, so quickly that the movement is almost a vibration. If you've ever felt the floor quake during an actual earthquake, you know the fluttery, shaking kind of movement. A person can quake with fear, and a building can quake during a wind storm. You can also use the word quake as a noun, to describe the feeling itself. The Old English root is cwacian, or "tremble or clatter of teeth."
Vocabulary lists containing quake
Common Five-letter Words for Wordle, List 5
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Scrabble: Words that Begin with Q
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Lesson 24
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
On Sunday night, rescuers successfully reached a village on Palue Island, just north of Flores's mainland, that had been cut off for nearly two full days after the initial quake.
From BBC ● Aug. 17, 2026
Melania Nius was at her husband's hospital bedside on Indonesia's Flores island when a powerful quake shook their town to its core, sending patients fleeing into the chaos outside.
From Barron's ● Aug. 16, 2026
Later that year, a 7.5-magnitude quake and a subsequent tsunami in Palu on Sulawesi island left more than 4,300 people dead or missing.
From Barron's ● Aug. 15, 2026
The quake struck the island of Flores shortly before 05:00 local time.
From BBC ● Aug. 15, 2026
Sitting at the head table and barking orders to the hundreds of workers who had crammed into the space after the quake, Superintendent Yoshida began to take stock of his reactors.
From "Meltdown" by Deirdre Langeland
But, shortly after 6 p.m. on June 24, the two powerful quakes struck just 39 seconds apart.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 14, 2026
The devastation comes less than two months after powerful twin quakes rattled neighboring Venezuela, killing more than 6,300 people and leaving tens of thousands homeless.
From Barron's ● Aug. 11, 2026
The quake comes less than two months after twin quakes devastated the north of neighbouring Venezuela, killing more than 6,100 people.
From BBC ● Aug. 10, 2026
National Assembly Chief Jorge Rodriguez, the brother of interim president Delcy Rodriguez, stated on June 30 that 30,000 people were located in the disaster zone when the quakes struck.
From Barron's ● Aug. 6, 2026
“I thought you were all about facts. About freedom of information? Well, how about this fact, Caleb? When—” My voice quakes.
From "Insurgent" by Veronica Roth
He was so influential that two presidents, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, quaked under fear of incurring McCarthy's wrath.
From Salon ● Oct. 6, 2024
But on board, the 12-year-old girl quaked with fear.
From Seattle Times ● May 7, 2024
Connors once bent strings wildly, as if the entire guitar quaked beneath his blues.
From New York Times ● Sep. 22, 2022
The car screamed, quaked, stopped and smoked yet somehow started again.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 18, 2022
The next step was to do the equations for the design of the De Laval nozzle, and privately I quaked at the thought of attempting them.
From "October Sky" by Homer Hickam
The overall sound is highly dramatic, with massed voices, quaking beats, horses whinnying in the distance, and percussion that evokes the threat of a rattlesnake.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 4, 2026
Troubles, however, are also quaking on the offensive side of America’s nuclear-weapons enterprise—specifically, the program to build a new land-based intercontinental ballistic missile, the Sentinel, to replace the 400 current ICBMs, known as Minuteman IIIs.
From Slate ● Sep. 16, 2025
He sounded quite irritated that they were asking him about such trivialities when he is the one who has world leaders quaking in their boots as he re-makes the whole world in his image.
From Salon ● Feb. 19, 2025
Seismologists in the region must have been alarmed by the quaking activity that occurred at Wednesday’s opening when Betts heaved all her might into Evillene’s “Don’t Nobody Bring Me No Bad News.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 15, 2024
That only results in me sobbing, shoulders quaking.
From "Saints and Misfits" by S.K. Ali
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
