Meaning
Sudden, overwhelming, contagious fear that sweeps a crowd - or a single mind - and destroys judgement. Panic is fear with the thinking switched off: market panics, crowd panics, kernel panics, all named for the moment reason loses the room. Now fully everyday; only the capital letter and the footnote remember that each panic is, etymologically, a visitation of Pan. Regional use: General English; classical origin.
Origin
The word is the god Pan's own. Pan, ruler of shepherds, woods, and pastures, wandered peacefully with his pipe, but woken from his midday nap he could give a great shout that sent flocks stampeding; Greek writers coined panikos, sudden fear, for the groundless terrors that overtook herds, crowds, and lone travellers and were credited to a god's unseen presence. English took the word early: Florio's 1603 Montaigne has the Panike terror, Plutarch in Holland's 1603 translation describes army frights which they call Panique Terrores, and Dryden's 1700 line mixes rumours, murmurs, and Panique Fear. The finance sense, a scramble to raise cash as prices fall, the theatre slang for a hilarious performance, and the computing kernel panic are modern descendants of the same stampede.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- a market panic
- panic-stricken
- panicked
Usage Examples
- A shout about smoke set off a panic on the escalators ninety seconds before the announcement began.
- The 1907 bank run began, like most panics, with one queue forming outside one branch.
- Don't panic, the engineer said, right before the whole cluster panicked and rebooted.