Etymology

zitterbewegung

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Today it means: An extremely fast oscillation of free electrons (and other particles) predicted by some solutions of the Dirac equation Full definition →

German zittern
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The story

  1. German · derived fromzittern“to tremble, jitter”
  2. English todayzitterbewegung

From German zittern (“to tremble, jitter”) + Bewegung (“motion”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.