Rocked

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Moved gently or forcefully back and forth or side to side ; felt a powerful emotion or was strongly affected by something ; provided comfort or support by holding or swaying someone gently
2. Swayed with repeated motion, often rhythmically ; underwent an intense feeling or disruptive event ; soothed or calmed someone by holding and moving them softly
3. Shifted repeatedly in a trembling or swaying manner ; was emotionally shaken or strongly influenced ; embraced and gently moved to offer reassurance or ease

Etymology: The past tense "rocked" is simply the regular past of "rock", so the story belongs to the verb itself, and it is a surprisingly tangled one. The verb comes from Middle English "rokken", which grew from Old English "roccian", and its deeper ancestry is a family of Germanic words for pulling, jerking and stirring. Cousins include Old German "rocken" (to drag or jerk), modern German "rücken" (to move or shift), and Icelandic "rukka" (to yank). The sense of gentle back-and-forth motion came from that older idea of jolting something to and fro. The same Germanic root produced a whole cluster of meanings that now look unrelated. Dutch "rokken" meant to cause something to move or stir, and Middle French "rocquer" was used of rocking a baby, which shows how close the verb once was to the cradle. The wider family also reaches a Latin relative, "runcāre", meaning to weed, which suggests the underlying idea was pulling and tugging at things. The noun "rock", meaning a stone mass, is a different word that happens to share its spelling. It came into English through Anglo-Norman "roque" from Medieval Latin "rocca", and its origin is uncertain. The verb and the noun only converged in spelling by chance.

Synonyms: shook, swayed, jostled, bounced, thrilled

Antonyms: stabilized, calmed, steadied