shim.
A wedge.
Meaning & usage
A wedge.
A thin piece of material, sometimes tapered, used for alignment or support.
A small library that transparently intercepts and modifies calls to an API, usually for compatibility purposes.
A kind of shallowly cutting plow used in tillage to break the ground and clear it of weeds.
A small metal device used to pick open a lock.
A thin device inserted into a card reader by a criminal to facilitate fraud.
Where this word comes from
Unknown; from Kent. Originally a piece of iron attached to a plow; sense of “thin piece of wood” from 1723, sense of “thin piece of material used for alignment or support” from 1860.
To fit one or more shims to a piece of machinery or other assembly; to adjust (something) by using shims.
To adjust the homogeneity of a magnetic field (after the mechanical devices once used for the purpose).
To intercept and modify calls to (an API), usually for compatibility purposes.
To attack a point-of-sale card reader with a shim.
Where this word comes from
Unknown; from Kent. Originally a piece of iron attached to a plow; sense of “thin piece of wood” from 1723, sense of “thin piece of material used for alignment or support” from 1860.
A transsexual person, especially a trans woman; (loosely) a drag queen or transvestite.
A person characterised by both male and female traits, or by ambiguous male-female traits; a hermaphrodite.
Where this word comes from
Blend of she + him.
Try it on your idea.
shim has 4 characters. Say it out loud, try it alongside a description of your project, and see whether its meaning fits what you want to create.
These are naming prompts. Meanings and pronunciation can vary; existing brand and domain uses have not been checked.
Explore the name generatorA word with a source.
Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.