ELECTRIC SHOCK

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does electric shock mean? 

• ELECTRIC SHOCK (noun)
  The noun ELECTRIC SHOCK has 3 senses:

1. the use of electricity to administer punishment or torture

2. trauma caused by the passage of electric current through the body (as from contact with high voltage lines or being struck by lightning); usually involves burns and abnormal heart rhythm and unconsciousness

3. a reflex response to the passage of electric current through the body

  Familiarity information: ELECTRIC SHOCK used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ELECTRIC SHOCK (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The use of electricity to administer punishment or torture

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Context example:

they used cattle prods to administer electric shocks

Hypernyms ("electric shock" is a kind of...):

torture; torturing (the deliberate, systematic, or wanton infliction of physical or mental suffering by one or more persons in an attempt to force another person to yield information or to make a confession or for any other reason)

corporal punishment (the infliction of physical injury on someone convicted of committing a crime)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Trauma caused by the passage of electric current through the body (as from contact with high voltage lines or being struck by lightning); usually involves burns and abnormal heart rhythm and unconsciousness

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Hypernyms ("electric shock" is a kind of...):

harm; hurt; injury; trauma (any physical damage to the body caused by violence or accident or fracture etc.)

Sense 3

Meaning:

A reflex response to the passage of electric current through the body

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

electric shock; electrical shock; shock

Context example:

electricians get accustomed to occasional shocks

Hypernyms ("electric shock" is a kind of...):

inborn reflex; innate reflex; instinctive reflex; physiological reaction; reflex; reflex action; reflex response; unconditioned reflex (an automatic instinctive unlearned reaction to a stimulus)

 Context examples 

A day after the mice received an electric shock, there was evidence that memories of the fear-inducing event were stored in engram cells in both the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex.

(New Study Challenges Assumptions about How Memories Are Made, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

A device that experiences problems related to small currents which may cause electric shock.

(Device Electrical Current Leakage Problem Evaluation Result, Food and Drug Administration)

That phrase, the “one small woman,” startled me like an electric shock. It was my own phrase, my pet, secret phrase, my love phrase for her.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

His master’s voice acted on Buck like an electric shock, He sprang to his feet and ran up the bank ahead of the men to the point of his previous departure.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

An electronic device designed to deliver a controlled electric shock to the heart in order to restore a normal heart rhythm, as a part of a larger device.

(Defibrillator Subassembly Device Component, NCI Thesaurus)

Defibrillation sends an electric shock to restore the heart rhythm to normal.

(Cardiac Arrest, NIH: National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute)

It seemed to him that he had intruded upon the holy of holies, and slowly and carefully he moved his head aside from the contact which thrilled him like an electric shock and of which she had not been aware.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

The feeling was not like an electric shock, but it was quite as sharp, as strange, as startling: it acted on my senses as if their utmost activity hitherto had been but torpor, from which they were now summoned and forced to wake.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Researchers used this approach to label memory cells during a fear-conditioning event that involved a mild electric shock to the mouse and then used light to artificially reactivate memories at different times.

(New Study Challenges Assumptions about How Memories Are Made, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)