panics

Noun (1)

panic (countable and uncountable, plural panics)

1. (uncountable) Overwhelming fear or fright, often affecting groups of people or animals; (countable) an instance of this; a fright, a scare.
   • She wakened in sharp panic, bewildered by the grotesquerie of some half-remembered dream in contrast with the harshness of inclement fact, drowsily realizing that since she had fallen asleep it had come on to rain smartly out of a shrouded sky.1914 November, Louis Joseph Vance, “An Outsider […]”, in Munsey’s Magazine, volume LIII, number II, New York, N.Y.: The Frank A[ndrew] Munsey Company, […], published 1915, →OCLC, chapter II...
2. (countable) A rapid reduction in asset prices due to broad efforts to raise cash in anticipation of such prices continuing to decline.
   • "I thought you inherited your money."
     "I did, old sport," he said automatically, "but I lost most of it in the big panic—the panic of the war."1925, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, chapter 5, in The Great Gatsby, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, published 1953, →ISBN, page 91
3. (US, colloquial, countable) A highly amusing or entertaining performer, performance, or show; a riot, a scream.

Noun (2)

panic (countable and uncountable, plural panics)

1. (originally) Foxtail millet or Italian millet (Setaria italica), the second-most widely grown species of millet.
2. (broadly) A plant of the genus Panicum, or of similar plants of other genera (especially Echinochloa and Setaria) formerly included within Panicum; panicgrass or panic grass.
   • [folio 76, recto] Panicum […] hathe no name in Engliſh yet⸝ but it may well be called panick after yͤ Latin. Panik hath leues lyke vnto a rede when it commeth firſt furth. […] [folio 76, verso] Dioſcorides writeth yͭ Panic hathe the ſame vertue yͭ Milleth hathe⸝ but that it noriſheth & byndeth...1562, Wylliam Turner [i.e., William Turner], “Of Panick”, in The Second Parte of Guilliam Turners Herball⸝ […], Cologne: […] Arnold Birckman, →OCLC, folios 76, recto – 76, verso
3. The edible grain obtained from one of the above plants.
   • Pannick ſtoppeth the laske as Millet doth, being boiled (as Plinie reporteth) in Goates milk and drunke twiſe in a day. Bread made of Pannick nouriſheth little, and is cold and dry, verie brittle, hauing in it neither clammineſſe, nor fatneſſe; and therefore it drieth a moiſt belly.1597, John Gerarde [i.e., John Gerard], “Of Panick”, in The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes. […], London: […] Edm[und] Bollifant, for Bonham and Iohn Norton, →OCLC, book I, page 79

See all 14 meanings of panic