noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   A transverse, shear wave, such as that produced by an earthquake. Movement is transverse to the direction of propagation and is a body wave.

Synonyms

All synonyms

seismic wave

Example

More examples

"That was the P-wave just now. The S-wave is coming."

Etymology

From "secondary wave" or "shear wave".

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.