different between quivering vs fibrillating

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?kw?v????/
• Hyphenation: quiv?er?ing

Adjective

quivering

1. shaking, shivering

   The quivering mass of jello rocked back and forth incessantly but remained on the plate.

   • 1853, Benjamin Robert Haydon, Tom Taylor (editor), The Life of Benjamin Robert Haydon,

     You envied me in all my great successes — Jerusalem, Lazarus, Mock Election, pupils, drawings, lectures ; and at all times tried to prove they were not successes, with a pale face and quivering lip — more pale and more quivering than usual.

Verb

quivering

1. present participle of quiver

Noun

quivering (plural quiverings)

1. A motion by which something quivers or trembles.

   quiverings of the eyelid

   • 1837, Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Gentle Boy in Twice-Told Tales,

     The quiverings of incipient harmony were hushed, and the divine sat in speechless and almost terrified astonishment, while she undid the door, and stood up in the sacred desk from which his maledictions had just been thundered.

   • 1921, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan the Terrible,

     And now the lion lunged suddenly to earth and with a few spasmodic quiverings lay still.

   • 1954, Harriette Simpson Arnow, The Dollmaker,

     There remained only the quiverings—the windows, the steel springs of the bed, the dishes, a chair touching the wall.

     There came at last a silence so complete she could hear the ticking of the clock under the bed, and the snoring of Sophronie's children behind the wall of the girls' bedroom.

English

Etymology

From fibrillate +? -ing.

Verb

fibrillating

1. present participle of fibrillate

Adjective

fibrillating (comparative more fibrillating, superlative most fibrillating)

1. Splitting into fibrils or fibres.
2. Of a muscle, especially in the heart: undergoing fibrillation; quivering.
   • 2000, JG Ballard, Super-Cannes, Fourth Estate 2011, p. 107:

     A publicity plane flew along the Croisette, its pennant fluttering like the trace of a fibrillating heart, unnoticed by the sunbathers stretched in their loungers in the hotel concessions.