shimmer
/ˈʃɪm.ə(ɹ)/US/ˈʃɪm.ɚ/
shimmer verb: to shine tremulously or intermittently; to gleam faintly.
Verb
shimmer (third-person singular simple present shimmers, present participle shimmering, simple past and past participle shimmered)
- To shine tremulously or intermittently; to gleam faintly.
- With dusky shimmering wanny globe, her lampe doth pale appeare1581, John Studley (translator), Medea, Act 4, in Seneca his Tenne Tragedies, London: Thomas Marsh, p. 135
- The shimmering glimpses of a stream1850, Alfred Tennyson, The Princess: A Medley, 3rd edition, London: Edward Moxon, Conclusion, p. 173
- 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.
Noun (1)
shimmer (plural shimmers)
- A faint or veiled and tremulous gleam or shining.
- I shut the closet, to conceal the strange, wraith-like apparel it contained; which, at this evening hour—nine o’clock—gave out certainly a most ghostly shimmer through the shadow of my apartment.1847 October 16, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], chapter X, in Jane Eyre. […], volume II, London: Smith, Elder, and Co., […], →OCLC, page 254
- The hives […] were scattered towards the back of the clearing, like small mounds of clean vegetable refuse. Over each mound there hung a dusty golden shimmer of bees.1922, Katherine Anne Porter, “María Concepción”, in Flowering Judas and Other Stories, New York: The Modern Library, published 1940, page 6
- Synonyms:
- glimmer
- A measure of the irregularities in the loudness of a particular pitch over time.
- As such, perturbation measures can only be derived from vowels, most accurately, sustained vowels or steady-state portions of vowels extracted from connected speech. Two commonly obtained perturbation measures are jitter and shimmer.2010, Daniel R. Boone, The Voice and Voice Therapy, Pearson College Division, →ISBN
Noun (2)
shimmer (plural shimmers)
- 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.
- Synonyms:
- shim
shimmer meaning in Hindi, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam
shimmer in Hindi
- to shine with a veiled light; to gleam faintly; to glisten; to glimmer
- चमक camak
- faint or veiled and tremulous gleam or shining; a glimmer
- चमक camak
shimmer in Urdu
- shimmer, glimmer, twinkle , sparkle
- جھلمل jhilmil
shimmer in Bengali
- ঝিকমিক করা, মৃদুভাবে জ্বলে ওঠা
shimmer in Malayalam
- മിന്നുക, മങ്ങിമങ്ങിപ്രകാശിക്കുക, ഇടവിട്ടു പ്രകാശിക്കുക
More languagesFewer languages
- shimmer in Kannada
- ಮಿನುಗು, ಹೊಳೆ
- shimmer in Thai
- เปล่งประกาย, ส่องแวววาว
- shimmer in Vietnamese
- lung linh
Examples of shimmer in a sentence
- I looked then and saw that his robes, which had seemed white, were not so, but were woven of all colours, and if he moved they shimmered and changed hue so that the eye was bewildered.1954, J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1973, Book 2, Chapter 2, p. 339:
- Pale tourists, tired but excited, emerge like apparitions from the heat haze that shimmers over the tarmac.2018, Tsitsi Dangarembga, chapter 22, in This Mournable Body, Minneapolis: Graywolf Press:
- He’d aimed film lamps at the rectangular pools, which sent reflections up the gallery wall in veined and fractured shimmers.2013, Rachel Kushner, chapter 16, in The Flamethrowers, New York: Vintage, published 2014, page 294:
Synonyms of shimmer
Forms of shimmer
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | shimmers |
| present participle | shimmering |
| past participle | shimmered |
| past | shimmered |
| Noun | |
| plural | shimmers |
Origin of shimmer
From Middle English schimeren, from Old English sċymrian, sċimrian, sċimerian, from Proto-Germanic *skimarōną. Cognate with Dutch schemeren, German schimmern.
From shim + -er.
Words formed from shimmer
Phrases with shimmer
Words that rhyme with shimmer
Questions about shimmer
- What does shimmer mean?
- Shimmer means to shine tremulously or intermittently; to gleam faintly.
- What is shimmer in Hindi?
- Shimmer in Hindi is चमक (camak). See Shimmer meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use shimmer in a sentence?
- I looked then and saw that his robes, which had seemed white, were not so, but were woven of all colours, and if he moved they shimmered and changed hue so that the eye was bewildered.
- What part of speech is shimmer?
- Shimmer can be a verb or a noun.
- How do you pronounce shimmer?
- Shimmer is pronounced /ˈʃɪm.ə(ɹ)/ (UK).
- What is the past tense of shimmer?
- The past tense of shimmer is shimmered.
Words near shimmer in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: shimmer (page history and authors); جھلمل (Urdu) (page history and authors); shimmer (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); shimmer (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); shimmer (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Back ache-shimmer.wav.
Cite this entry: “shimmer.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shimmer. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.