Etymology

shudder

shud·der
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Today it means: To shake nervously, often from fear or horror. Full definition →

Middle English schoderen ← Middle Dutch schudderen ← Middle Low German schodderen
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The story

  1. Proto-West Germanic · inherited from*skudrōn“to shake, tremble”
  2. Old English · inherited from*sċudrian
  3. Proto-Indo-European · derived from*skewdʰ-
  4. Proto-Germanic · derived from*skudjaną
  5. Proto-West Germanic · derived from*skuddjan
  6. Middle Low German · derived fromschodderen
  7. Middle Dutch · derived fromschudderen
  8. Middle English · inherited fromschoderen
  9. English todayshudder

From Middle English schoderen, schuderen, possibly from Middle Dutch schudderen and/or Middle Low German schodderen, iterative forms of the verb at hand in Dutch schudden, Low German schüdden (both “to shake”), German schütten (“to pour”), from Proto-West Germanic *skuddjan, from Proto-Germanic *skudjaną, from Proto-Indo-European *skewdʰ-. From Low German are also borrowed German schaudern (“to shudder”), Danish skudre, Swedish skudda. Alternatively, possibly from an unrecorded Old English *sċudrian, an iterative variant to Old English sċūdan (“to shudder, quake”), from Proto-West Germanic *skudrōn (“to shake, tremble”), from the same source as the Middle Dutch and Middle Low German terms above.

Words from the same roots

Proto-Indo-European*skewdʰ- all →

shood

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.