Other forms: shuddering, shuddered, shudders
To shudder is to shake suddenly with cold or horror. Shudder at the thought, a shudder ran through him, shudder to think.
The movement is involuntary and brief — one convulsive shake rather than continuous trembling. It goes with disgust and dread more than with cold. I shudder to think is the fixed phrase for not wanting to imagine something. Of a machine or a building it means a violent shake. Note shuddering; and that the word came from Dutch or Low German rather than being native.
1verbshudderTo shake suddenly with cold or horror.
“She shuddered as the cold wind blew through her thin coat.”
2nounshakeSuch a shake.
“A shudder ran through the crowd when the tightrope walker wobbled.”
shudder is a sudden shake.
Middle English schuderen probably came from Middle Dutch or Middle Low German, from verbs meaning to shake. German schütteln, to shake, is from the same family.
Old English
*sċudrian
Proto-Indo-European
*skewdʰ-
Proto-Germanic
*skudjaną
Proto-West Germanic
*skuddjan
Middle Low German
schodderen
Middle Dutch
schudderen
Middle English
schoderen
English, today
shudder
From Middle English schoderen, schuderen, possibly from Middle Dutch schudderen and/or Middle Low German schodderen, iterative forms of the verb at hand in Dutch schudden, Low German schüdden (both “to shake”), German schütten (“to pour”), from Proto-West Germanic skuddjan, from Proto-Germanic skudjaną, from Proto-Indo-European skewdʰ-. From Low German are also borrowed German schaudern (“to shudder”), Danish skudre, Swedish skudda. Alternatively, possibly from an unrecorded Old English sċudrian, an iterative variant to Old English sċūdan (“to shudder, quake”), from Proto-West Germanic skudrōn (“to shake, tremble”), from the same source as the Middle Dutch and Middle Low German terms above.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Body Language & Gestures