earthquakes

Noun

earthquake (plural earthquakes)

1. A shaking of the ground, caused by volcanic activity or movement around geologic faults.
   • 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.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto II”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
2. (planetary geology) Such a quake specifically occurring on the planet Earth, as opposed to other celestial bodies.
   • 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.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
3. (figuratively) A sudden and intense upheaval; a severely disruptive event.
   • 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.2019 July 11, John Thornhill, “Does tech threaten to rerun the worst of the Industrial Revolution?”, in Financial Times

See all 4 meanings of earthquake