earthquake
Etymology
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Etymology
From Middle English erthequake, corresponding to earth + quake.
Pronunciation Nounearthquake (plural earthquakes)
- A shaking of the ground, caused by volcanic activity or movement around geologic faults. [from 14th c.]
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto II”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC ↗:
- Her alablaster brest she soft did kis, / Which all that while shee felt to pant and quake, / As it an Earth-quake were: at last she thus bespake.
- (planetary geology) Such a quake specifically occurring on the planet Earth, as opposed to other celestial bodies. [from 20th c.]
- 1988, Jürgen Oberst, Yosio Nakamura, “A seismic risk for the lunar base”, in The Second Conference on Lunar Bases and Space Activities of the 21st Century, volume 1, NASA, pages 231–233:
- Since the response of some man-made structures to the ground motion near the epicenter is highly dependent on frequency, a significant difference in potential damage to the structures is expected between earthquakes and moonquakes.
- 2006, Bruce A. Bolt, Earthquakes, Fifth Edition:
- The wave patterns, too, are strikingly different: The secondary (S) waves and surface waves on lunar seismograms are not generally as clearly defined and distinct as are those of earthquakes.
- (figuratively) A sudden and intense upheaval; a severely disruptive event.
- French: tremblement de terre, séisme
- German: Erdbeben
- Italian: terremoto, sisma, tremuoto (obsolete)
- Portuguese: sismo, terramoto (Portugal), terremoto (Brazil), tremor de terra, tremor,
- Russian: землетрясе́ние
- Spanish: terremoto (in Latin American Spanish, used mainly for destructive earthquakes), temblor, sismo (formal, Latin America), seísmo (formal, Spain)
earthquake (earthquakes, present participle earthquaking; simple past and past participle earthquaked)
- (intransitive) To undergo an earthquake.
- 1993, Gyeorgos C. Hatonn, The Best of Times: The Worst of Times, page 129:
- Watch the Philippines very closely for the next little while. There is rumbling and earthquaking deep within Pinatubo and increased earthquaking within Mayon.
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.003
