The verb galvanize refers to stimulating muscles with an electrical current, and is also used to suggest stimulating someone into action.
The word galvanize was coined to honor the 18th Century scientist Luigi Galvani, who found that a spark could make a frog's legs move. This discovery led to further studies in bioelectrogenesis, or what Galvani called "animal electricity," and became the basis for the Mary Shelley book Frankenstein, in which a mad scientists attempts to use electricity to galvanize a monster to life. Nowadays, people use this term much more figuratively, like when they describe galvanizing a political movement or even a sports team into action.
