I shudder to think it! And shudder again at the 70% likelihood you are prescient with your comment

For the first time in many years I've stumbled upon a word I have never ever heard before, not in a movie, not in any literature, nowhere. Thank you.

It seems HN has utility after all.

> not in any literature

It would seem you are way over due as far as reading Frank Herbert’s Dune-series goes.

A bit off-topic, but Dune also gave us this magnificent quote:

> I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

- Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear.

Funny, that happened to me this week as well. With the same word!

Good ol' Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.

Was it him again?

Happy to share and partake in the natural refulgence of the variegated English language with you.

I like you're speak.

But what does it mean, to shudder?

Shuddering is an involuntary convulsion that typically occurs when something is unconscionable or otherwise triggers a physionomic reaction that cannot be helped [meaning, it happens autonomously, of its own accord, based on the immediately preceding data]. You can't really shudder someone, it doesn't make any sense as a transitive verb, and yet the idiomatic usage in English has landed on "I shudder to X" where X is a thinking-pondering-considering verb such as "I shudder to think." or "I shudder at the prospect of his presidency" it's usually used to denote a non-positive feeling with the topic matter and when people actually shudder in real life, we do so with a sound exclamation under our breath such as "euuu" as your shoulders, arms, and potentially more gently vibrates or wiggles to indicate the effect being felt and received.

Human bodies shudder, and we typically denote body with "I" but it is a distinction between thinking self and bodily self, this shudder idea, because we typically don't use things such as "I was shuddering all night x" that's just weird and would make someone think you experienced a seizing episode. Not sure how this made it into English. In unrelated matters of similar linguistic domain, the Japanese have an expression "made my stomach stand" which is an expression to indicate "anger arose" ... not sure how that came to be either!

Here it is used in a somewhat popular song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oQ8sNSYXmQ