Learn English – What does this example sentence “He shocked so easily” mean

meaningpast-perfect

It's an example sentence under the entry word "shock".

verb
1 [with object] cause (someone) to feel surprised and upset:
[no object] experience outrage:
he shocked so easily

What does "so easily" mean here?

Best Answer

OP's intransitive usage is relatively uncommon, but it's defined in OED...

shock (verb) also intransitive for passive, to suffer shock.

Here's an example from Google Books...

...talk to Maria Shriver about contemporary social mores and she shocks easily and giggles like a teenager.

But in practice most native speakers would always say she is easily shocked (she's shocked by things that wouldn't normally bother most people). Also note that, idiomatically, we don't use is shocked easily (which has only one instance in Google Books, compared to over 5000 for the first link in this paragraph).