shunt
Americanverb (used with object)
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to shove or turn (someone or something) aside or out of the way.
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to sidetrack; get rid of.
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Electricity.
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to divert (a part of a current) by connecting a circuit element in parallel with another.
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to place or furnish with a shunt.
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Railroads. to shift (rolling stock) from one track to another; switch.
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Surgery.
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to divert blood or other fluid by means of a shunt.
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the tube itself.
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to move or turn aside or out of the way.
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(of a locomotive with rolling stock) to move from track to track or from point to point, as in a railroad yard; switch.
noun
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the act of shunting; shift.
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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.
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a railroad switch.
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Surgery. a channel through which blood or other bodily fluid is diverted from its normal path by surgical reconstruction or by a synthetic tube.
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Anatomy. an anastomosis.
adjective
verb
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to turn or cause to turn to one side; move or be moved aside
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railways to transfer (rolling stock) from track to track
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electronics to divert or be diverted through a shunt
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(tr) to evade by putting off onto someone else
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slang (tr) motor racing to crash (a car)
noun
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the act or an instance of shunting
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a railway point
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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
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med a channel that bypasses the normal circulation of the blood: a congenital abnormality or surgically induced
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informal a collision which occurs when a vehicle runs into the back of the vehicle in front
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of shunt
1175–1225; (v.) Middle English schunten, shonten to shy (said of horses); (noun) Middle English, derivative of the v.; akin to shun
Explanation
A shunt is a small tube that goes inside the body to drain fluid. It also means to divert in a general way, like if you shunt the thought of tubes in your body, you think about rainbows and kittens instead. Although shunt usually refers to a tube that drains blood or other fluid out of a part of the body, shunt also means to bypass. If a train is shunted, it’s diverted from the main track onto a side track. The word may have come from shun, as in “turn away,” which is what a shunt essentially does. It turns something away from where it was headed.
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.
Funders shunt capital from around the world into U.S. lawsuits, taking a cut of any recovery.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 5, 2026
At the time, Piquet described the shunt into the wall as a "simple mistake".
From BBC • Nov. 20, 2025
She is currently living on $1,206 a month in and out of her van with a failing shunt in her head, which doctors implanted to treat her cyst.
From Los Angeles Times • Oct. 16, 2025
The bouncer is intimidating, the attendants shunt customers to digital kiosks, and there are no attractive, informative displays for browsing.
From Slate • Apr. 19, 2025
Immediately, even before I left the platform, I tried to shunt all memory of the event from me.
From "Black Boy" by Richard Wright
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.
