English

Adjective

Panic ‎(comparative more Panic, superlative most Panic)

1. Pandean

English

Alternative forms

• panick (obsolete)

Adjective

panic ‎(comparative more panic, superlative most panic)

1. (now rare) Pertaining to the god Pan.
2. Of fear, fright etc: sudden or overwhelming (attributed by the ancient Greeks to the influence of Pan).
   • 1603, John Florio, translating Michel de Montaigne, Essayes, London: Edward Blount, OCLC 946730821, Folio Society, 2006, vol.1, pp.57-8:

     All things were there in a disordered confusion, and in a confused furie, untill such time as by praiers and sacrifices they had appeased the wrath of their Gods. They call it to this day, the Panike terror.

   • 1978, Lawrence Durrell, Livia, Faber & Faber 1992 (Avignon Quintet), p.537:

     At that moment a flight of birds passed close overhead, and at the whirr of their wings a panic fear seized her.

   • 1993, James Michie, trans. Ovid, The Art of Love, Book II:

     Terrified, he looked down from the skies / At the waves, and panic blackness filled his eyes.

Noun

panic ‎(plural panics)

1. Overpowering fright, often affecting groups of people or animals.
   • 1914, Louis Joseph Vance, Nobody, chapter II:

     She wakened in sharp panic, bewildered by the grotesquerie of some half-remembered dream in contrast with the harshness of inclement fact.

   • 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 19, in The China Governess:

     Meanwhile Nanny Broome was recovering from her initial panic and seemed anxious to make up for any kudos she might have lost, by exerting her personality to the utmost. She took the policeman's helmet and placed it on a chair, and unfolded his tunic to shake it and fold it up again for him.

   • 1994, Stephen Fry, The Hippopotamus Chapter 2

     With a bolt of fright he remembered that there was no bathroom in the Hobhouse Room. He leapt along the corridor in a panic, stopping by the long-case clock at the end where he flattened himself against the wall.

2. (finance, economics) Rapid reduction in asset prices due to broad efforts to raise cash in anticipation of continuing decline in asset prices.
   • 2008 July 11, Romaine Bostick, “Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Are Sound; Panic Unwarranted, Dodd Says”, in Bloomberg:

     "There is sort of a panic going on, and that is not what ought to be," Dodd, a Democrat from Connecticut, said at a press conference in Washington today. "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were never bottom feeders in the residential mortgage market."

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

panic ‎(third-person singular simple present panics, present participle panicking, simple past and past participle panicked)

1. (intransitive) To feel overwhelming fear.
2. (computing, transitive) To cause the system panic; to crash the system.
   • 2009, Solaris System Engineers, Solaris 10 System Administration Essentials

     If your new driver has an error that panics the system when you load the driver, then the system will panic again when it tries to reboot after the panic.

Translations

Related terms

• panicky

Etymology 2

Latin panicum.

Noun

panic

1. (botany) A plant of the genus Panicum.

Synonyms

• panicgrass, panic grass

Czech

Noun

panic m

1. male virgin

Related terms

• panna f

Slovak

Noun

panic m

1. male virgin

Related terms

• panna f