Definition of "shudder"

shudder

/ˈʃʌd.ə/

verb
third-person singular simple present shudders, present participle shuddering, simple past and past participle shuddered
1. (intransitive) To shake nervously, often from fear or horror.
  Quotations
  VVreath'd vp in fatall folds iuſt in his way, / The feare where of doth make him ſhake, & ſhudder, […]
  1593, [William Shakespeare], Venus and Adonis, London: […] Richard Field, […]; 2nd edition, London: […] Richard Field, […], 1594, signature Fiij, verso, lines
  What makes me shudder so? / I shudder and I sigh to think / That even Cicero / And many-minded Homer were / Mad as the mist and snow.
  1929, William Butler Yeats, Mad as the Mist and Snow
2. (intransitive) To vibrate jerkily.
noun
plural shudders
1. A shivering tremor, often from fear or horror.
2. A moment of almost pleasurable fear; a frisson.
  Quotations
  They name thee before me, / ⁠A knell to mine ear; / A shudder comes o'er me— / ⁠Why wert thou so dear?
  c. 1816, Lord Byron, When we Two parted
  … and was not that slight tremble, a shudder which went through her young body, when his kiss, glowing and scorching with his wild passion, had dared to touch her tiny ice-cold hand?
  1906 January, Baroness Orczy [i.e., Emma Orczy], chapter 22, in A Son of the People: A Romance of the Hungarian Plains, London: Greening & Co.