'Tremor' is Latin for 'a trembling' — from PIE *trem-. Its meaning of involuntary shaking is unchanged.
An involuntary quivering movement; a shaking or trembling, especially of the ground during an earthquake; a sudden feeling of fear or excitement.
From Latin 'tremor' (a trembling, a shaking, a quaking), an action noun from 'tremere' (to tremble, to quake, to shake with fear or cold), from PIE *trem- (to tremble, to shake). The PIE root *trem- is well represented across Indo-European: Greek 'treměin' (to tremble), Lithuanian 'trimti' (to tremble), Old Norse 'þruma' (thunder — the trembling of the sky). The root is related to or may share a Proto-Indo-European expressive base with *drem- (sleep) and *ter- (crossing, wearing through) in some analyses, but its primary semantic field is involuntary physical motion. Latin 'tremere'
The word 'tremendous' — now meaning 'extremely large' — originally meant 'causing trembling, terrifying,' from Latin 'tremendus' (to be trembled at). The shift from 'terrifyingly large' to simply 'very large' is a classic case of semantic bleaching, where a word loses its emotional intensity through overuse.
Words closest in meaning, ranked by similarity