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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

shimmer.

To shine tremulously or intermittently; to gleam faintly.

7 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

verb/ˈʃɪm.ə(ɹ)/UK/ˈʃɪm.ɚ/US
  1. To shine tremulously or intermittently; to gleam faintly.

    intransitive
  2. Of a mass of bees: to move their abdomens in a coordinated manner so as to produce a shimmering wave effect, thought to deter predators.

Where this word comes from

From Middle English schimeren, from Old English sċymrian, sċimrian, sċimerian, from Proto-Germanic *skimarōną. Cognate with Dutch schemeren, German schimmern.

noun/ˈʃɪm.ə(ɹ)/UK/ˈʃɪm.ɚ/US
  1. A faint or veiled and tremulous gleam or shining.

  2. A measure of the irregularities in the loudness of a particular pitch over time.

Where this word comes from

From Middle English schimeren, from Old English sċymrian, sċimrian, sċimerian, from Proto-Germanic *skimarōną. Cognate with Dutch schemeren, German schimmern.

noun/ˈʃɪm.ə(ɹ)/UK/ˈʃɪm.ɚ/US
  1. A thin electronic device that is fit inside a card reader, such as on automated teller machines (ATMs), or point-of-sale terminals (POS's), that acts as an intermediate interface between the chip on a chip-and-pin technology card and the chip reader of the machine, to allow one to clone the chip.

Where this word comes from

From shim + -er.

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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.