shake

The earthquake shook the building.

He shook the can of soda for thirty seconds before delivering it to me, so that, when I popped it open, soda went everywhere.

Meanwhile Nanny Broome was recovering from her initial panic and now seemed anxious to make up for any kudos she might have lost, by exerting her personality to the utmost. She took the policeman's helmet and placed it on a chair, and unfolded his tunic to shake it and fold it up again for him.

1963, Margery Allingham, “Meeting Point”, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC, page 232:

(transitive, ergative) To cause (something) to move rapidly in opposite directions alternatingly.

Shaking his head, he kept repeating “No, no, no”.

I became alſo a reproch vnto them: when they looked vpon me, they ſhaked their heads.

1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Psalms 109:25, column 1:

(transitive) To move (one's head) from side to side, especially to indicate refusal, reluctance, or disapproval.

to shake fruit down from a tree

[…]Shake off the golden ſlumber of repoſe;[…]

c. 1607–1608 (date written), William Shakespeare, [George Wilkins?], The Late, and Much Admired Play, Called Pericles, Prince of Tyre. […], London: […] [William White and Thomas Creede] for Henry Gosson, […], published 1609, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii]:

But indeed this Shame was a bold Villain; I could ſcarce ſhake him out of my company; [...]

1680, John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World, to That which is to Come: […], 5th edition, Edinburgh: […] Iohn Cairns, […], →OCLC, page 70:

(transitive) To move or remove by agitating; to throw off by a jolting or vibrating motion.

Her father’s death shook her terribly.

He was shaken by what had happened.

Since the launch early last year of […] two Silicon Valley start-ups offering free education through MOOCs, massive open online courses, the ivory towers of academia have been shaken to their foundations. University brands built in some cases over centuries have been forced to contemplate the possibility that information technology will rapidly make their existing business model obsolete.

2013 July 20, “The attack of the MOOCs”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8845:

(transitive) To disturb emotionally; to shock.

I can’t shake the feeling that I forgot something.

(transitive, idiomatic) To lose, evade, or get rid of (something).

She shook with grief.

The slightest effort made the patient cough. He would stand leaning on a stick and holding a hand to his side, and when the paroxysm had passed it left him shaking.

1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XXIII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:

(intransitive) To move from side to side.

OK, let’s shake on it.

(intransitive, usually as "shake on") To shake hands.

She was shaking it on the dance floor.

to shake a note in music

(transitive) To give a tremulous tone to; to trill.

The experience shook my religious belief.

The story of Ms. He and her mother began in the early 1960s, shortly before the Cultural Revolution shook China.

2014 January 20, Didi Kirsten Tatlow, “‘She. Herself. Naked.': The Art of He Chengyao”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2023-08-16, Sinosphere:

(transitive, figurative) To threaten to overthrow.

(intransitive, figurative) To be agitated; to lose firmness.

en-verb

shake (third-person singular simple present shakes, present participle shaking, simple past shook or (rare) shaked or (slang) shooketh, past participle shaken or (dialectal) shook)

shakes (present singular third-person)
shaking (participle present)
shook (past)
shaked (past rare)
shooketh (past slang)
shaken (participle past)
shook (dialectal participle past)

From Middle English schaken, from Old English sċeacan, sċacan (“to shake”), from Proto-West Germanic *skakan, from Proto-Germanic *skakaną (“to shake, swing, escape”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)keg-, *(s)kek- (“to jump, move”).
Cognate with Scots schake, schack (“to shake”), West Frisian schaekje (“to shake”), Dutch schaken (“to elope, make clean, shake”), Low German schaken (“to move, shift, push, shake”) and schacken (“to shake, shock”), Old Norse skaka (“to shake”), Norwegian Nynorsk skaka (“to shake”), Swedish skaka (“to shake”), Danish skage (“to shake”), Dutch schokken (“to shake, shock”), Russian скака́ть (skakátʹ, “to jump”). More at shock.


shake

The cat gave the mouse a shake.

She replied in the negative, with a shake of her head.

The act of shaking or being shaken; tremulous or back-and-forth motion.

And when the princely Perſean Diadem,
Shall ouerweigh his wearie witleſſe head,
And fall like mellowed fruit, with ſhakes of death,
In faire Perſea noble Tamburlain
Shall be my Regent, and remaine as King:

c. 1587–1588, [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire, London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act II, scene i:

(usually in the plural) A twitch, a spasm, a tremor.

The snake did the frug, the monkey did the shake. The crowd, mostly young couples, tourists and kids, loved it.

1969, Allen V. Ross, Vice in Bombay, London: Tallis Press, page 52:

(usually preceded by definite article) A dance popular in the 1960s in which the head, limbs, and body are shaken.

A beverage made by adding ice cream to a (usually carbonated) drink; a float.

Shake cannabis, small, leafy fragments of cannabis that gather at the bottom of a bag of marijuana.

[…] most suppliers will allow up to 120 grams of shake to a kilo, or 12 percent; kilo-level buyers are usually unhappy if they find more.

1989, Terry Williams, chapter 2, in The Cocaine Kids, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, page 35:

(US, slang, uncountable) An adulterant added to cocaine powder.

A crack or split between the growth rings in wood.

A basic wooden shingle made from split logs, traditionally used for roofing etc.

“And do you realize that in a few shakes I've got to show up at dinner and have Mrs Cream being very, very kind to me? It hurts the pride of the Woosters, Jeeves.”

1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter XXI, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC:

(informal) Instant, second. (Especially in two shakes.)

Empty casks are[…]taken to pieces, and the staves closely packed up in a cylindrical form, constituting what are called shakes or packs

1820, William Scoresby, An Account of the Arctic Regions:

(nautical) One of the staves of a hogshead or barrel taken apart.

(music) A rapid alternation of a principal tone with another represented on the next degree of the staff above or below it; a trill.

A Signora Rossinuola, with the face of a goddess, and the voice of an angel, made her first curtsy that evening to the Neapolitans. She was received with the most rapturous applause. Nothing was heard of next day but her shake and her smile.

1831, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XIV, in Romance and Reality. […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 263:

(music) In singing, notes (usually high ones) sung vibrato.

Edward H[enry] Knight
w:Edward H. Knight

(UK, dialect) The redshank, so called from the nodding of its head while on the ground.

As long as I had seen Mr Holdsworth in the rooms at the little inn at Hensleydale, where I had been accustomed to look upon him as an invalid, I had not been aware of the visible shake his fever had given to his health.

1864, Elizabeth Gaskell, Cousin Phillis:

Most of the fission energy was released in the last few generations, so if the device blew itself apart before about fifty-seven shakes had elapsed, […]

2003, Ruth H. Howes, Caroline L. Herzenberg, Their Day in the Sun: Women of the Manhattan Project (page 97)

(historical, nuclear physics) An informal unit of time equal to 10 nanoseconds.

en-noun

shake (countable and uncountable, plural shakes)