[f. THRILL v.1)
1. A subtle nervous tremor caused by intense emotion or excitement (as pleasure, fear, etc.), producing a slight shudder or tingling through the body; a penetrating influx of feeling or emotion.
a. 1680. Glanvill, Serm., vii. (R.). Joy warms the … blood, and sends it about with a pleasant thrill through all the channels of its motion.
1799. Ht. Lee, Canterb, T., Frenchm. T. (ed. 2), I. 240. Those communications … shot cold thrills through his frame.
1852. Mrs. Stowe, Uncle Tom’s C., xxii. St. Clare would feel a sudden thrill, and clasp her in his arms.
1867. Smiles, Huguenots Eng., xi. (1880), 195. The intelligence caused a thrill of indignation to run throughout England.
b. Thrilling property (of a play, novel, narrative, speech, etc.); sensational quality; transf. (slang), a literary work having this property, a sensational story, a ‘thriller.’
1886. Westm. Rev., Oct., 382. The sensational title of a shilling thrill.
1891. E. Kinglake, Australian at H., 97. Relevancy … is apparently not a matter of so much consequence as thrill, as the man says in Mark Twain’s book.
1894. Mrs. H. Ward, Marcella, I. 14. Whatever had been spoken by him had grace, thrill, meaning.
2. The vibrating or quivering of anything tangible or visible; acute tremulousness, as of a sound; a vibration, throbbing, tremor.
1817. Moore, Lalla R., Veiled Prophet (1851), 96. While a thrill Lives in your sapient bosoms.
1825. Scott, Talism., xiv. As the thrill of a nerve, unexpectedly jarred, will awaken the sensation of agony.
1865. Baring-Gould, Were-wolves, xiv. 240. Listening to the harplike thrill of the breeze in the old grey tree-tops.
1874. Lowell, Agassiz, I. i. The electric nerve, whose instantaneous thrill Makes next-door gossips of the antipodes.
1892. Tyndall, in Times, 3 Feb., 5/6. The sudden … dropping and lifting of an opaque screen over the electric light, thus producing vivid thrills upon the fog.
b. Phys. and Path. A vibratory movement, resonance, or murmur, felt or heard in auscultation.
1822–34. Good’s Study Med. (ed. 4), I. 514. That vibratory thrill [of the pulse] which has been called wiriness.
1877. Roberts, Handbk. Med. (ed. 3), II. 9. Thrill or purring tremor … indicate the special character of a peculiar vibratory sensation conveyed to the fingers.
1879. Khory, Princ. Med., 56. Besides impulse we have another movement of the heart, known as thrill.
1897. Allbutt’s Syst. Med., III. 58. He … has a well-marked pre-systolic thrill and a loud pre-systolic murmur at the cardiac apex.
