panicking

Verb

panic (third-person singular simple present panics, present participle panicking, simple past and past participle panicked)

1. (transitive) 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.1927 October, Rudyard Kipling, “Fairy-Kist”, in Limits and Renewals, Dominions edition, London: Macmillan and Co., […], published 1932, →OCLC, page 169
2. (transitive) To cause (a computer system) to crash.
   • If your new driver has an error that panics the system when you load the driver, then the system will panic again when it tries to reboot after the panic. The system will continue the cycle of panic, reboot, and panic as it attempts to reload the faulty driver every time it reboots after panic.2010, Solaris system engineers, “Managing Devices”, in Solaris 10 System Administration Essentials (Solaris System Administration Series), Santa Clara, Calif.: Sun Microsystems Press, →ISBN, section...
3. (US, colloquial, transitive) To highly amuse, entertain, or impress (an audience watching a performance or show).
4. (intransitive) To feel panic, or overwhelming fear or fright; to freak out, to lose one's head.
   • I don't want you to be hopeful, I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day and then I want you to act.2019 January 25, 5:22 from the start, in Our House is on Fire, spoken by Greta Thunberg, Davos, Graubünden, Switzerland: World Economic Forum
5. (intransitive) Of a computer system: to crash.

See all 14 meanings of panic