shunt
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "shunt", 5-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "shunt" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "shunt" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
shunt is aEnglishverb. It means: To cause to move (suddenly), as by pushing or shoving; to give a (sudden) start to. Pronounced /ʃʌnt/. Often confused with sun and shut.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | shunt |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /ʃʌnt/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #36,339 |
| Misspellings tracked | 8 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for shunt is 5 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ʃʌnt/. Corpus data places it at rank #36,339 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 10 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 8 documented wrong-spelling variants for shunt, with forms such as "hsunt", "shhunt", and "shnut". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "sun", "shut", "suit", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English schonten, schunten (“to jerk, swerve; to dodge, escape”), either: * possibly a back-formation from Middle English schonen (“to avoid, refuse, hate, fear”), from Old English sċunian, sċyniġan; see shun. Or * an alteration of Middle Englis… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is shunt, spelled S-H-U-N-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1To cause to move (suddenly), as by pushing or shoving; to give a (sudden) start to.
- 2To divert to a less important place, position, or state.
- 3To provide with a shunt.
- 4To move data in memory to a physical disk.
- 5To divert electric current by providing an alternative path.
- 6To move a train from one track to another, or to move carriages, etc. from one train to another.
- 7To have a minor collision, especially in a motor car.
- 8To divert the flow of a body fluid.
- 9To turn aside or away; to divert.
- 10To carry on arbitrage between the London stock exchange and provincial stock exchanges.
Etymology
From Middle English schonten, schunten (“to jerk, swerve; to dodge, escape”), either: * possibly a back-formation from Middle English schonen (“to avoid, refuse, hate, fear”), from Old English sċunian, sċyniġan; see shun. Or * an alteration of Middle English *schunden, *schynden, from Old English sċyndan, sċendan (“to hasten, hurry”) (as in āsċyndan (“to remove, take away”), from Proto-West Germanic *skundijan, from Proto-Germanic *skundijaną (“to impel, hasten”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kewt- (“to rattle, shake”). * from unrecorded Old English *sċunettan, a derivative of sċunian (“to shun, avoid”). As regards the noun sense, compare Middle English shunt (“swerve; sudden jerk”), derived from the verb.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: hsunt,shhunt,shnut,shunnt,shuntt,shutn,sshunt,suhnt
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for shunt
Misspelling Variants of "shunt"
Frequency rank: #36,339 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: