Shrug

How to spell shrug

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce shrug

What does shrug mean?

1. verbTo raise and drop the shoulders briefly to show indifference, doubt, or lack of knowledge.
2. nounA brief raising of the shoulders used to show indifference or uncertainty.
3. nounA short cropped cardigan or jacket that covers only the shoulders and upper arms.

Shrug in a sentence

• verb

  She could only shrug when the auditor asked about the missing receipts.

• noun

  His only response to the complaint was a tired shrug.

• noun

  She wore a fine lace shrug over her sleeveless dress.

• verb

  Many staff simply shrug at the vague new policy.

• noun

  A quick shrug told the team she had no answer.

• noun

  A knitted shrug kept her shoulders warm in the chilly office.

Where does shrug come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

Shrug first appears in late Middle English, around the 1400s, as the verb shruggen, meaning to draw up or hunch the shoulders, often as a sign of cold or unease. Its ultimate origin is genuinely uncertain, but it is usually linked to the Scandinavian languages: compare the Danish skrugge and dialectal Swedish skrugga, meaning to stoop or crouch, which point to a shared northern Germanic ancestor. The gesture of lifting the shoulders to signal indifference or 'I do not know' only became the dominant sense in early modern English. The familiar phrase 'shrug off', meaning to dismiss something as unimportant, grew out of that same shoulder movement. The spelling keeps the awkward looking 'shr' cluster and a single 'g', which is the main thing a writer has to remember.

How the word is built

• shrug (single Middle English root meaning to draw up the shoulders); no prefix or suffix