Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use shimmy in a sentence

19 example sentences · noun, verb

Shimmy means a dance move involving thrusting the shoulders back and forth alternately. Example: “He shimmied up the flagpole.”

Examples of shimmy by meaning

nounA dance that was popular in the 1920s.

  • The tango, the Texas Tommy, Walking the Dog, the one step, the fox trot, the shimmy, and all their out-growths, had their origin in the palaces of lust on the Barbary Coast of San Francisco.1930, Jefferis & Nichols, Safe Counsel or Practical Eugenics, page 200

verbTo perform a shimmy (dance movement involving thrusting the shoulders back and forth alternately).

  • She wondered would he think her awful, and try to get fresh if she shimmied.1934, James T. Farrell, chapter 13, in The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan

verbTo climb something (e.g. a pole) gradually (e.g. using alternately one's arms then one's legs).

  • He shimmied up the flagpole.
  • The static made her dress shimmy up her leg.

verbTo vibrate abnormally, as a broken wheel.

  • They came in among earth-moving machines, a total absence of trees, the usual hieratic geometry, and eventually, shimmying for the sand roads, down in a helix to a sculptured body of water named Lake Inverarity.1966 March, Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49, New York, N.Y.: Bantam Books, published November 1976, →ISBN, page 37

verbTo move across a narrow ledge, either by hanging from it or by strafing on it along the wall.

  • Jump up to the ledge on your right and shimmy around the corner.2009, Allison Schubert, Lunabean.com's Videogame Guides of 2008: Adventure 3-Pack
  • Climb on top of the room and drop down to shimmy along its back ledge.1999, Prima Development, The Big PlayStation Book

More sentences with shimmy

  • I'm going to shimmy up to those rails above the park and try to grab some air.2013, DM Archer, The Astral Projection Conspiracy, →ISBN. From the entry grab some air
  • She shimmies up the tamarind tree to watch the sistersʼ progression with undisguised raptness.2008, Preeta Samarasan, Evening is the Whole Day, Fourth Estate, page 210. From the entry raptness
  • The waiter boogied back with the drinks and did a little shimmy before he boogied off.2007, Blaize Clement, Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter, page 69. From the entry boogie
  • They resembled the “washboarding” of bees, a herringboning, a shimmy.2013, Barry Werth, The Billion-Dollar Molecule: The Quest for the Perfect Drug, →ISBN, page 322. From the entry washboarding
  • She wouldn't let me look at myself, but every so often Liza would shimmy up and gush, "Wow, honey!2012, Hester Browne, The Runaway Princess, page 310. From the entry respackle
  • In the middle of a shimmy, her stomach cramped.2011, Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi, A Shore Thing. From the entry peach
  • Castering nosewheel which readily locked with mistightened shimmy dampened collar.2002, Verti-flite - Volumes 48-49, page 57. From the entry mistightened
  • Some of the so-called best people in the profession are using the shimmy shake in song, dance and pantomime.1930, Jefferis & Nichols, Safe Counsel or Practical Eugenics, page 209. From the entry shimmy shake
  • Armor was expensive, and it probably got in the way when they stripped down to their altogethers and shimmied up trees to drop.2003, Lynn Kurland, A Dance Through Time. From the entry altogethers
  • The dancers express giddy playfulness in terms of exaggeration: overarticulated beats of the feet, flamboyantly oversized port de bras, and patently unballetic shimmies of the shoulder.2006, Thomas F. DeFrantz, Dancing Revelations, page 150. From the entry unballetic
  • Suddenly, a rhythmic shaking and rattling overtook the room, shoogling and shimmying the structure in time to the acid jazz stomp riverboat boogie shuffle beat of the song.2005, Neil Keir Henderson, An English Summer in Scotland and Other Unlikely Events, page 225. From the entry shoogle
  • Croissants and meringues make a Marie Antoinette wig; a shimmying flapper shift consists of thin langues-de-chat; oval slices of country bread form a bustle that literally trails into crumbs.2005 January, Cynthia Rose, “Pain Couture (High-Fashion Bread)”, in Crafts, number 192, Crafts Council, via EBSCOhost, →ISSN, page 58. From the entry langue de chat

Meaning of shimmy

  1. noun A dance move involving thrusting the shoulders back and forth alternately.
  2. noun A dance that was popular in the 1920s.
  3. noun An abnormal vibration, especially in the wheels of a vehicle.

Full definition of shimmy

Questions about shimmy in a sentence

How do you use shimmy in a sentence?
Shimmy is used as a noun and verb. For example: “He shimmied up the flagpole.”
What is a short sentence with shimmy?
“He shimmied up the flagpole.”
What does shimmy mean?
Shimmy means a dance move involving thrusting the shoulders back and forth alternately.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shimmy (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use shimmy in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/shimmy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.