Word.ws English Dictionary

shock wave

shock wave noun: a powerful compression wave produced by the movement of a body through a fluid or gas at a velocity greater than the local speed of sound.

Noun

shock wave (plural shock waves)

  1. A powerful compression wave produced by the movement of a body through a fluid or gas at a velocity greater than the local speed of sound.
  2. (figuratively) Any violent disturbance.
    • 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
    • To lose against Liverpool is a painful business at any time but to be on the receiving end of what was a record defeat in this fixture will send shock waves through Old Trafford.2023 March 5, Phil McNulty, “Liverpool 7-0 Manchester United”, in BBC Sport

shock wave meaning in Tamil, Bengali, Arabic and Malay

shock wave in Tamil

அதிர்ச்சி அலை, அதிர்வலை

shock wave in Bengali

powerful compression wave
ঘাত তরঙ্গ ghat toroṅgo

shock wave in Arabic

powerful compression wave
موجة صادمة

shock wave in Malay

powerful compression wave
gelombang kejutan
More languagesFewer languages
shock wave in Indonesian
gelombang kejut
shock wave in Persian
موج ضربهای
shock wave in Thai
คลื่นกระแทก
shock wave in Vietnamese
sóng xung kích

Forms of shock wave

pluralshock waves
alternative formshockwave

Questions about shock wave

What does shock wave mean?
Shock wave means a powerful compression wave produced by the movement of a body through a fluid or gas at a velocity greater than the local speed of sound.
What is shock wave in Tamil?
Shock wave in Tamil is அதிர்ச்சி அலை, அதிர்வலை. See Shock wave meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is shock wave?
Shock wave is a noun.
What is the plural of shock wave?
The plural of shock wave is shock waves.

Words near shock wave in the dictionary

  1. shock treatment
  2. shock treatments
  3. shock troop
  4. shock troops
  5. shock value
  6. shock wave
  7. shock waves
  8. shock worker
  9. shock workers
  10. shock-headed
  11. shock-stall

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shock wave (page history and authors); shock wave (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-shock wave.wav.

Cite this entry: “shock wave.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shock_wave. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.