Sceacan

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To move with a rapid, jerking motion back and forth ; to leave a place and head off somewhere else
2. To tremble or quiver with quick, forceful movements ; to take oneself away from a location and set out
3. Shaking or jolting something vigorously to and fro ; departing from a spot and journeying onward

Etymology: Sceacan is an Old English verb meaning "to shake, to hasten, to depart" (the forms in the older texts are strong and vary by tense). Its sense of movement is physical and concrete, the kind of motion a person or animal makes when they run off or shake something loose. The root it grew from is shared with Germanic relatives such as the Old High German "scehan," which carried the same idea of hurrying or fleeing, so the sense of quick, sudden motion has stayed close to the surface across the family. The verb was a strong verb in Old English, so its past tense and past participle changed their vowel, a pattern familiar from modern verbs like "sing" and "sang." Over the centuries it fell out of everyday use, and the sense of shaking or fleeing survives in English mostly through its descendants and cognates rather than in the verb itself.