panic

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   sudden mass fear and anxiety over anticipated events

   panic in the stock market

2. 2
   verb

   cause sudden fear in or fill with sudden panic

   The mere thought of an isolation cell panicked the prisoners

3. 3
   verb

   be overcome by a sudden fear

   The students panicked when told that final exams were less than a week away

4. 4
   adj

   Of fear, fright, etc: overwhelming or sudden.

   All things were there in a diſordered confuſion, and in a confuſed furie, vntill ſuch time as by prayers and ſacrifices they had appeaſed the wrath of their Gods. They call it to this day, the P[a]nike terror.

5. 5
   adj

   Pertaining to or resulting from overwhelming fear or fright.

   [H]e perceived how that many women followed his ſouldiers, ſome being their wives, and ſome wanting nothing to make them ſo but marriage, […] The King coming to a great river, after his men and the wagons were paſſed over, cauſed the bridge to be broken down, hoping ſo to be rid of theſe feminine impediments; but they on a ſudden liſt up a panick ſhrick which pierced the skies, and the ſouldiers hearts on the other ſide of the river, who inſtantly vowed not to ſtirre a foot farther, except with baggage, and that the women might be fetch'd over, which was done accordingly.

6. 6
   noun

   Overwhelming fear or fright, often affecting groups of people or animals; (countable) an instance of this; a fright, a scare.

   She wakened in sharp panic, bewildered by the grotesquerie of some half-remembered dream in contrast with the harshness of inclement fact, drowsily realizing that since she had fallen asleep it had come on to rain smartly out of a shrouded sky.

7. 7
   noun

   Ellipsis of kernel panic (“on Unix-derived operating systems: an action taken by the operating system when it cannot recover from a fatal error”); (by extension) any computer system crash.

   If your new driver has an error that panics the system when you load the driver, then the system will panic again when it tries to reboot after the panic. The system will continue the cycle of panic, reboot, and panic as it attempts to reload the faulty driver every time it reboots after panic.

8. 8
   noun

   A rapid reduction in asset prices due to broad efforts to raise cash in anticipation of such prices continuing to decline.

   "I thought you inherited your money." "I did, old sport," he said automatically, "but I lost most of it in the big panic—the panic of the war."

Etymology

From Late Middle English panik, panyk (“plant of the genus Panicum”), borrowed from Latin pānicum, pānīcum (“foxtail millet or Italian millet (Setaria italica); plant of the genus Panicum, panicgrass”); further etymology uncertain, probably either from pānis (“bread; loaf”) (possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *peh₂- (“to graze; to protect; to shepherd”)) or pānus (“ear of millet; thread wound on a bobbin”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *(s)penh₁- (“to twist; to weave”)) + -cum (suffix forming neuter nouns). Doublet of bannock and bonnag