Other forms: shunting, shunted, shunts
To shunt is to move wagons about within a railway yard. Shunt the wagons, shunting yard, a shunting engine.
It is the work of making up and breaking down trains, done by a small powerful locomotive, and shunting yards were once a large part of every goods operation. Figuratively, to shunt somebody is to move them somewhere out of the way: shunted into a side role. In medicine, a shunt is a tube diverting fluid, and in electricity a shunt carries current round a component.
1verbshuntTo move wagons about within a railway yard.
“Railway workers shunted the empty wagons into a siding for the night.”
2verbmoveTo move somebody out of the way.
“After the scandal, the manager was shunted into a job with no real power.”
shunt is a moving aside.
Middle English schunten meant to swerve or dodge, and the railway sense grew from that idea of moving something aside. The medical and electrical senses follow the same diversion.
Middle English
schonten
English, today
shunt
Built from
From Middle English schonten, schunten (“to jerk, swerve; to dodge, escape”), either:
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Railways