Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A seismic wave that travels relatively quickly through the earth, causing the rocks it passes through to change shape, and the particles of the rocks to vibrate at right angles to the direction of wave propagation. S-waves can travel through solids but not through liquids or gases.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[S(econdary) wave, since it is the second type of wave, after the faster P-waves, to be detected by a seismograph after a seismic event.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From "secondary wave" or "shear wave"

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Examples

  • MYERS: We talked a little bit earlier about how the S-wave, how the side-to-side motion can really be devastating to these buildings that don't have a lot of support and are not certainly made to our California regulations.

    CNN Transcript Jan 12, 2010 2010

  • That comes early in the earthquake, and then one that comes in like this, which is called an S-wave.

    CNN Transcript Jan 12, 2010 2010

  • Would a strike slip cause more of the S-wave or would the thrust cause more of that kind of damage?

    CNN Transcript Jan 12, 2010 2010

  • And what is -- what is a P-wave and what is an S-wave?

    CNN Transcript Jan 12, 2010 2010

  • What happens with an S-wave, it is very difficult for a building to stay standing up in an S-wave because the building does this.

    CNN Transcript Jan 12, 2010 2010

  • And the slipping causes two types of waves, an S-wave and a P-wave, and after the break, Wolf, we'll talk about how both of those could affect the people there of Haiti.

    CNN Transcript Jan 12, 2010 2010

  • The secondary wave, the S-wave, looks literally like an S.

    CNN Transcript Jan 12, 2010 2010

  • It's a word that we use to describe when a P-wave and then an S-wave come together after the shock.

    CNN Transcript Jan 12, 2010 2010

  • In an intensive and most enjoyable collaboration, we succeeded in obtaining a complete solution for S-wave scattering by a spherical potential.

    Walter Kohn - Autobiography 1999

  • It has an S-wave in it with the buoyancy down near the seabed.

    unknown title 2011

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