shunt

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   railways: to move a train or carriage onto another track, especially in or near a station

   The locomotive began to shunt empty carriages onto a siding.

2. 2
   verb

   to move or divert someone or something to another, often less important, place or position

   The committee shunted the difficult proposal into a later meeting.

3. 3
   noun

   medicine: a passage or implanted tube that diverts blood or another bodily fluid

   The surgeon inserted a shunt to drain excess fluid from the brain.

4. 4
   noun

   electricity: a low-resistance path connected in parallel to divert part of a current

   The meter uses a shunt to carry most of the electrical current around its sensing element.

Common collocations

• shunt circuit Noun + noun

From Middle English schonten or schunten, 'to jerk, swerve, or dodge,' of uncertain Germanic origin. Railway use developed in the nineteenth century from the idea of moving something aside; electrical and medical nouns later extended the same idea to a path that diverts a current or fluid.

Topics

External links

• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary
• Google Images