panic
Forms
- Comparative
- more panic
- Superlative
- most panic
- Plural
- panics
- present (v1)
- panic
- past (v2)
- panicked
- past participle (v3)
- panicked
- present participle
- panicking
- 3rd person singular
- panics
Definitions
1.Of fear, fright, etc: overwhelming or sudden.
- At that moment a flight of birds passed close overhead, and at the whirr of their wings a panic fear seized her.
2.Pertaining to or resulting from overwhelming fear or fright.
1.Overwhelming fear or fright, often affecting groups of people or animals; (countable) an instance of this; a fright, a scare.
- With a bolt of fright he remembered that there was no bathroom in the Hobhouse Room. He leapt along the corridor in a panic, stopping by the long-case clock at the end where he flattened himself against the wall.
2.A rapid reduction in asset prices due to broad efforts to raise cash in anticipation of such prices continuing to decline.
3.A highly amusing or entertaining performer, performance, or show; a riot, a scream.(colloquial)
4.Ellipsis of kernel panic (“on Unix-derived operating systems: an action taken by the operating system when it cannot recover from a fatal error”); (by extension) any computer system crash.
1.To cause (a computer system) to crash.
2.To cause (someone) to feel panic (“overwhelming fear or fright”); also, to frighten (someone) into acting hastily.
- He told us he'd almost stepped on Ellen's body that night, dead and stiffening. Then I'd come round the corner and hailed him, and that panicked him.
Frequency
Overall
Rare· #4394
By learning goal
- Everyday conversation
- Rare
- General reading & writing
- Rare
- Academic
- Rare
- Literature
- Rare
Related words
Word family
Etymology
The adjective is borrowed from Middle French panique, a word itself borrowed from Ancient Greek πανικός (panikós, “pertaining to Pan”); Pan, the Greek god of fields and woods, was believed to be the source of mysterious sounds that caused contagious, groundless fear in herds and crowds, or in people in lonely spots.