Trembling

Part of speech: adjective, verb

Pronunciation: /ˈtɹɛmblɪŋ/

Definitions

1. A physical phenomenon involving shaking or quaking that can arise from fear, cold, excitement, or weakness
2. An involuntary oscillation of the body or a part of it that occurs as a response to psychological or physiological stimuli
3. A state of shaking or shivering often associated with emotions like fear or excitement and also caused by external conditions such as coldness or discomfort

Etymology: "Trembling" is the present participle and gerund of "tremble", so its story is really the story of the verb. The root is the Latin "tremere", meaning to quiver or shake, a word that also gave English "tremor". Latin speakers formed a frequentative "tremulare" from it, meaning to shake repeatedly, and that form passed into Old French as "trembler" before arriving in Middle English as "tremblen" during the medieval period. The same root stretches back to ancient Greek, where "tremo" carried the same sense of shaking, which shows that the idea of trembling was already expressed by a shared Indo-European stem. The participle form took on a life of its own: it can describe a body quaking with cold or fear, but also a voice that wavers or a leaf that flutters, so one word covers both the physical shake and its emotional causes.

Synonyms: shaking, quivering, shuddering

Antonyms: steady, calm