Definitions

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

  • noun The act or process of shaking violently, especially as a method of diagnosis to detect the presence of fluid and air in a body cavity.
  • noun The condition of being shaken violently.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The act of shaking.
  • noun A shaking; a violent shock.
  • noun A method in physical diagnosis which consists in grasping the thorax between both hands and shaking it quickly to elicit sounds, and thus to detect the presence of liquid, etc., in the pleural sacs.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The act of shaking; a shake; esp. (Med.), a shaking of the body to ascertain if there be a liquid in the thorax.

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

  • noun The act of succussing or shaking; a shake.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun shaking a person to determine whether a large amount of liquid is present in a body cavity

Etymologies

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

[Latin succussiō, succussiōn-, from succussus, past participle of succutere, to toss up : sub-, up from below; see sub– + quatere, to shake; see kwēt- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Latin succussio, from succutere.

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Examples

  • The notation 30X means the 1: 10 dilution, followed by succussion, is repeated thirty times.

    Archive 2006-08-01 Steve Carper 2006

  • The notation 30X means the 1: 10 dilution, followed by succussion, is repeated thirty times.

    Homeopathy = Lactose PIlls Steve Carper 2006

  • Homeopathy works by taking a small amount of the actual ingredient and using a process called succussion to dilute and shake (mechanically) it until what's left is a tiny bit of the ingredient and the full energy imprint.

    Wil's Ebay E-Store amp;34; 2010

  • Homeopathic remedies begin with a given natural substance, progressively diluted (and shaken in a process known as "succussion") until no measurable amount of the material remains.

    Alison Rose Levy: Just How Smart is Your Body? 2008

  • Somehow the magical process of shaking the remedy very hard between each dilution step (called "succussion") imbues it with the property of curing what it would normally cause.

    ScienceBlogs Channel : Life Science Orac none@example.com 2010

  • In this process, liquids are diluted (with water or ethanol) and shaken by ten hard strikes against an elastic body ( "succussion"), to get the next, succeeding higher potency.

    Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium - Recent changes [en] 2009

  • In this process, liquids are diluted (with water or ethanol) and shaken by ten hard strikes against an elastic body ( "succussion"), to get the next, succeeding higher potency.

    Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium - Recent changes [en] 2009

  • In this process, liquids are diluted (with water or ethanol) and shaken by ten hard strikes against an elastic body ( "succussion"), to get the next, succeeding higher potency.

    Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium - Recent changes [en] 2009

  • In this process, liquids are diluted (with water or ethanol) and shaken by ten hard strikes against an elastic body ( "succussion"), to get the next, succeeding higher potency.

    Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium - Recent changes [en] 2009

  • In this process, liquids are diluted (with water or ethanol) and shaken by ten hard strikes against an elastic body ( "succussion"), to get the next, succeeding higher potency.

    Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium - Recent changes [en] 2009

Comments

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  • The act or process of shaking violently, especially as a method of diagnosis to detect the presence of fluid and air in a body cavity.

    The condition of being shaken violently.

    July 14, 2007

  • Ouch.

    July 14, 2007

  • "Natural substances, of course, are often acutely toxic. Troubled by the side effects that often accompanied his medications, Hahnemann experimented with diluting them. After each successive dilution, he subjected the solution to vigorous shaking, or succussion. He made the remarkable discovery that although dilution eliminated the side effects, it did not diminish the effectiveness of the medications. This is rather grandly known as 'the law of infinitesimals.'"

    - Robert L. Park, Alternative Medicine and the Laws of Physics.

    October 4, 2009

  • I love the Century's third definition: "A method in physical diagnosis which consists in grasping the thorax between both hands and shaking it quickly to elicit sounds, and thus to detect the presence of liquid, etc., in the pleural sacs."

    August 2, 2011