Shell Shock Meaning

(uncountable) A psychiatric condition characterized by fatigue caused by battle.

Example: Used other than as an idiom: see shell,‎ shock.
1967, Bernard Share, Inish, page 99,
  The other was to go on, to the next drink or the bed or the grass outside, where the party-noises ebbed and flowed like shell-shocks and the Southern Cross burnt crookedly above.
2004, Edgar Lee Masters, Barrett Bays, Domesday Book, page 322,
  " […] Think of me / With all these psychic shell shocks — first the war, / Its great emotions, then this Elenor."
2011, Roberta Brandes Gratz, The Battle for Gotham, page 21,
  But while malls kllled much of downtown America, they only partially injured New York City. The density of this city guaranteed a less dramatic impact than the shell shocks that crippled so many other cities.
A person with the condition.
1920, Phillip Gibbs, Now It Can Be Told, 2009, page 350,
  I passed through the shell-shock wards and a yard where the "shell-shocks" sat about, dumb, or making queer, foolish noises, or staring with a look of animal fear in their eyes.
1943, Arthur Graham Butler, The Australian Army Medical Services in the War of 1914-1918, Volume 3, page 107,
  Of the 79 officer casualties 10 were "shell-shocks", or about 12 per cent, of the whole. Of the 10 shell-shocks 4 were sent to C.C.S. and 6 to Corps Rest Station.
2004, Susan Zeiger, In Uncle Sam's Service: Women Workers with the American Expeditionary Force, 1917—1919, page 131,
  Most nurses found the helplessness of "the shell shocks" painful and "pitiful."