earthquake
/ˈɝθkweɪk/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.15 in modern English
26
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
2
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Such a quake specifically occurring on the planet Earth, as opposed to other celestial bodies.
Example Sentences
- "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."
- "I had just awoke at gun-fire (5 A.M.), when suddenly the thatch began to rustle and shake as if an army of cats were galloping over it, and immediately afterwards my bed shook too, so that for an instant I imagined myself back in New Guinea, in my fragile house, which shook when an old cock went to roost on the ridge; but remembering that I was now on a solid earthen floor, I said to myself, "Why, it's an earthquake," and lay still in the pleasing expectation of another shock; but none came, and this was the only earthquake I ever felt in Ternate."
- "Last year's earthquake crushed his house, his livelihood and very nearly his leg, he said, pointing to a plastered limb that refuses to heal."
- "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."
- "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."
- "As we have seen, economic earthquakes often result in political shockwaves. […] He highlights a correlation between those states with the highest robot density and those states that unexpectedly swung behind Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, namely Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₁er-der. Proto-Germanic *erþō Proto-West Germanic *erþu Old English eorþe Middle English erthe Proto-Germanic *kwakōnąder. Old English cwacian Middle English quaken Middle English erthequake English earthquake From Middle English erthequake, corresponding to earth + quake. Displaced Middle English eorð byfung (“earthquake”) from Old English eorþbeofung (literally “earth shaking”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: *h₁er-, erthequake
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈɝθkweɪk/
- British English: /ˈɜːθkweɪk/
Usage
Subject
Wiktionary places this term in Geology.