shake
Definitions
Banking
- verb to move something quickly from side to side
Construction
- roofing or sidewall material produced from wood, usually cedar, with at least one surface having a grain split face.
- A crack in lumber due to natural causes.
Food
Medical
- verb to move, or make something move, with short quick movements
Slang
- verb to alert, rouse, summon. This use of the word, obviously deriving from the literal shaking of someone to wake them, is now employed as part of police, underworld and working-class jargon.
- verb to search or stop and harass (a suspect). The word, used by police and criminals, is a shortening of the more familiar shake down.
Origin & History of “shake”
Shake is a
general Germanic
verb, although
today its
only surviving relatives are Swedish
skaka and Norwegian
skage. It comes
from a prehistoric Germanic *
skakan,
which goes
back to the Indo-European
base *
skeg-, *
skek- (
source also of Sanskrit
khajati ‘agitate, churn’ and Welsh
ysgogi ‘move’).
