shunt

[ shuhnt ]
See synonyms for shunt on Thesaurus.com
verb (used with object)
  1. to shove or turn (someone or something) aside or out of the way.

  2. to sidetrack; get rid of.

  1. Electricity.

    • to divert (a part of a current) by connecting a circuit element in parallel with another.

    • to place or furnish with a shunt.

  2. Railroads. to shift (rolling stock) from one track to another; switch.

  3. Surgery.

    • to divert blood or other fluid by means of a shunt.

    • the tube itself.

  4. to move or turn aside or out of the way.

  5. (of a locomotive with rolling stock) to move from track to track or from point to point, as in a railroad yard; switch.

noun
  1. the act of shunting; shift.

  2. Also called bypass. Electricity. a conducting element bridged across a circuit or a portion of a circuit, establishing a current path auxiliary to the main circuit, as a resistor placed across the terminals of an ammeter for increasing the range of the device.

  1. a railroad switch.

  2. Surgery. a channel through which blood or other bodily fluid is diverted from its normal path by surgical reconstruction or by a synthetic tube.

  3. Anatomy. an anastomosis.

adjective
  1. Electricity. being, having, or operating by means of a shunt: a shunt circuit; a shunt generator.

Origin of shunt

1
1175–1225; (v.) Middle English schunten, shonten to shy (said of horses); (noun) Middle English, derivative of the v.; akin to shun

Other words from shunt

  • shunter, noun
  • un·shunt·ed, adjective

Words Nearby shunt

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use shunt in a sentence

British Dictionary definitions for shunt

shunt

/ (ʃʌnt) /


verb
  1. to turn or cause to turn to one side; move or be moved aside

  2. railways to transfer (rolling stock) from track to track

  1. electronics to divert or be diverted through a shunt

  2. (tr) to evade by putting off onto someone else

  3. (tr) motor racing slang to crash (a car)

noun
  1. the act or an instance of shunting

  2. a railway point

  1. electronics a low-resistance conductor connected in parallel across a device, circuit, or part of a circuit to provide an alternative path for a known fraction of the current

  2. med a channel that bypasses the normal circulation of the blood: a congenital abnormality or surgically induced

  3. British informal a collision which occurs when a vehicle runs into the back of the vehicle in front

Origin of shunt

1
C13: perhaps from shunen to shun

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012