Definition of "shunt" []

• The act or process of turning aside or moving to an alternate course. (noun)
• A railroad switch. (noun)
• Electricity A low-resistance connection between two points in an electric circuit that forms an alternative path for a portion of the current. Also called bypass. (noun)
• Medicine A passage between two natural body channels, such as blood vessels, especially one created surgically to divert or permit flow from one pathway or region to another; a bypass. (noun)
• To turn or move aside or onto another course: shunting traffic around an accident. (verb-transitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "A tremendous shunt from the French pack at the first scrum on New Zealand ball saw the visiting front row buckle and pop under pressure, and Dupuy made no mistake from 35 metres after three minutes."
• "Well, if you’re Roald Dahl, you team up with a couple of other guys to invent a brain shunt to ease the pain."
• "The study, which involved 158 mothers carrying babies with spina bifida, found that sealing up the defective spinal cords before they were born also significantly reduced the chances they would need a tube known as a shunt surgically implanted to drain fluid from their brains."