shunt

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun The act or process of turning aside or moving to an alternate course.
• noun A railroad switch.
• noun Electricity A low-resistance connection between two points in an electric circuit that forms an alternative path for a portion of the current.
• noun Medicine A passage between two natural body channels, such as blood vessels, especially one created surgically to divert or permit flow from one pathway or region to another; a bypass.
• intransitive verb To turn or move aside or onto another course.
• intransitive verb To evade by putting aside or ignoring.
• intransitive verb To switch (a train or car) from one track to another.
• intransitive verb Electricity To provide or divert (current) by means of a shunt.
• intransitive verb Medicine To divert or permit flow of (a body fluid) from one pathway or region to another by surgical means.
• intransitive verb To move or turn aside.
• intransitive verb Electricity To become diverted by means of a shunt. Used of a circuit.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun A drawing or turning back.
• noun A turning aside; specifically, in railroading, a turning off to a siding, or short line of rails, that the main line may be left clear.
• noun In electricity, a conductor, usually of relatively low resistance, joining two points in an electric circuit, and forming a desired circuit or path through which a part of the current will pass, the amount depending on the relative resistance of the shunt and that part of the principal circuit whose extremities it connects.
• To start aside or back; shrink back; flinch; of a horse, to shy.
• To turn back or away; turn aside.
• Specifically— In railroading, to turn from one line of rails to another; switch.
• In electricity, to use a shunt. See shunt, n., 3.
• To escape.
• To turn aside from a topic, purpose, line of thought, course of action, etc.; shift one's thoughts, conversation, proceedings, etc., into a different direction.
• To hold back; delay.
• To slip down, as earth.
• To shun; move from.
• To move or turn aside.
• To give a start to; shove.
• Hence To shove off; put out of one's way; free one's self of, as of anything disagreeable, by putting it upon another.
• To ward off injury, trouble, or danger from; remove from a position of trouble or danger.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• intransitive verb To go aside; to turn off.
• transitive verb Obs. or Prov. Eng. To shun; to move from.
• transitive verb Obs. or Prov. Eng. To cause to move suddenly; to give a sudden start to; to shove.
• transitive verb To turn off to one side; especially, to turn off, as a grain or a car upon a side track; to switch off; to shift.
• transitive verb (Elec.) To provide with a shunt.
• noun (Railroad) A turning off to a side or short track, that the principal track may be left free.
• noun (Elec.) A conducting circuit joining two points in a conductor, or the terminals of a galvanometer or dynamo, so as to form a parallel or derived circuit through which a portion of the current may pass, for the purpose of regulating the amount passing in the main circuit.
• noun (Gunnery) The shifting of the studs on a projectile from the deep to the shallow sides of the grooves in its discharge from a shunt gun.
• noun (Elec.) a dynamo in which the field circuit is connected with the main circuit so as to form a shunt to the letter, thus employing a portion of the current from the armature to maintain the field.
• noun a firearm having shunt rifling. See under Rifling.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• verb To turn away or aside
• verb To move a train from one track to another, or to move carriages etc from one train to another
• verb To divert electric current by providing an alternative path
• verb To divert the flow of a body fluid using surgery
• verb To move data in memory to a physical disk
• verb informal (UK) To have a minor collision, especially in a motor car
• noun A switch on a railway
• noun A connection used as an alternative path between parts of an electric circuit
• noun A passage between body channels constructed surgically as a bypass
• noun informal (UK) A minor collision

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• verb provide with or divert by means of an electrical shunt
• verb transfer to another track, of trains
• noun implant consisting of a tube made of plastic or rubber; for draining fluids within the body