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.

• 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.
• 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.

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