Word.ws English Dictionary

shy

/ʃaɪ/

shy adjective: easily frightened; timid.

shy: easily frightened; timid
Image: Hermann Kaulbach, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Adjective

shy (comparative shier or shyer or more shy, superlative shiest or shyest or most shy)

  1. Easily frightened; timid.
    • The horses of the army, and those of the royal stables, having been daily led before me, were no longer shy, but would come up to my very feet without starting.1726 October 28, [Jonathan Swift], Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. […] [Gulliver’s Travels], London: […] Benj[amin] Motte, […], →OCLC, (please specify |part=I to IV)
  2. Reserved; disinclined to familiar approach.
    • He is very shy with strangers.
    • VVhat makes you ſo ſhy of late, my good Friend? There's no Body loves you better than I, nor has taken more Pains in your Affairs: […]1712, Humphry Polesworth [pseudonym; John Arbuthnot], “An Account of the Conference between Mrs. Bull and Don Diego Dismallo”, in John Bull in His Senses: Being the Second Part of Law is a...
  3. Cautious; wary; suspicious.
    • We grant, although he had much wit, / H' was very shy of using it; / As being loth to wear it out, / And therefore bore it not about,1662 (indicated as 1663), [Samuel Butler], “. Canto I.”, in Hudibras, London; republished in A[lfred] R[ayney] Waller, editor, Hudibras: Written in the Time of the Late Wars, Cambridge...
    • Princes are, by wisdom of state, somewhat shy of their successors.1641, Henry Wotton, The Characters of Robert Devereux and George Villiers
  4. (informal) Short, insufficient or less than.
    • By our count your shipment came up two shy of the bill of lading amount.
    • It is just shy of a mile from here to their house.
  5. (UK, US) Less likely to reveal whom they will vote for than average, chiefly in the context of the collective effect this has on polling accuracy.
    • Pollsters need to remember the shy Tory factor.

Verb

shy (third-person singular simple present shies, present participle shying, simple past and past participle shied)

  1. (intransitive) To avoid due to caution, embarrassment or timidness.
    • Courts might tend to shy from limiting Congress under such a vague standard.(page 172)
    Synonyms:
    shy away
  2. (intransitive) To jump back in fear.
    • The horse shied at the unexpected approach of a motor vehicle.
    Synonyms:
    start, startle
  3. (transitive) To throw sideways with a jerk; to fling.
    • to shy a stone
    • shy a slipper
  4. (Scotland, intransitive, transitive) To throw a ball with two hands above the head, especially when it has crossed the side lines in a football (soccer) match.
  5. (Scotland) To hit the ball back into play from the sidelines in a shinty match.

Noun

shy (plural shies)

  1. An act of throwing.
    • Foker discharged a prodigious bouquet at her, and even Smirke made a feeble shy with a rose, and blushed dreadfully when it fell into the pit1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849–1850, →OCLC
    • If Lord Brougham gets a stone in his hand, he must, it seems, have a shy at somebody.1846, Punch, volume 10
  2. A place for throwing.
    • coconut shy
  3. A sudden start aside, as by a horse.
  4. In the Eton College wall game, a point scored by lifting the ball against the wall in the calx.
  5. (Scotland) A throw-in from the sidelines, using two hands above the head.
  6. (Scotland) In shinty, the act of tossing the ball above the head and hitting it with the shaft of the caman to bring it back into play after it has been hit out of the field.
  7. (archaic) A gibe; a sneer.

Proper noun capitalized: Shy

Shy (plural Shys)

  1. A surname.

shy meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali

shy in Hindi

embarrassed
लज्जावान lajjāvān

shy in Tamil

வெட்கம் கொண்ட, நாணம் கொண்ட, வெட்கமுள்ள, அச்சமுள்ள, கூச்சம், எதிர்நோக்கத்தயங்கு

shy in Urdu

shy, blushing
شرمگیں śarmgī̃

shy in Bengali

shy, bashful, timid
লাজুক lajuk
More languagesFewer languages
shy in Malayalam
ശാലീനം śālīnaṁ
shy in Kannada
ಗಾಬರಿಗೊಂಡು ಚಲಿಸು, ದೂರಸರಿ, ನಾಚು, ಲಜ್ಜೆಹೊಂದು
shy in Punjabi
ਸ਼ਰਮੀਲੀ
shy in Gujarati
શરમાળ
shy in Assamese
লাজুকা lazuka, লাজুকী lazuki, লাজকুৰীয়া lazokuria, লাজুক lazuk
shy in Arabic
خَجُول ḵajūl, خَجِل ḵajil, مُوَرَّط muwarraṭ
shy in Thai
อาย aai
shy in Vietnamese
nhát, nhút nhát, ngại

Examples of shy in a sentence

  • Graham Norton: But the people coming up to you now, like the Americans, well, you know, the Americans, they're not shy, the Americans. / Maggie Smith: No.2015 October 30, The Graham Norton Show, season 18, episode 6:
  • […] I am very ſhy of building any thing of moment upon foundations that I eſteem ſo unſure, […]1661, Robert Boyle, “A Proemial Essay, wherein, with Some Considerations Touching Experimental Essays in General, is Interwoven such an...
  • The year I turned 26, as the head of my own brokerage firm, I made $49 million, which really pissed me off because it was three shy of a million a week.2013, Terence Winter, The Wolf of Wall Street, spoken by Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio):
  • United move seventh - still six points off a Champions League place and a massive 16 shy of the lead held by rivals Manchester City.2018 December 1, Tom Rostance, “Southampton 2 – 2 Manchester United”, in BBC Sport:

All 40 example sentences with shy

Synonyms of shy

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Antonyms

7 more antonymsFewer antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of shy

Forms of shy

Adjective
comparativeshier
comparativeshyer
comparativemore shy
superlativeshiest
superlativeshyest
superlativemost shy
Verb
third-person singular presentshies
present participleshying
past participleshied
pastshied
Noun
pluralshies
Proper noun
pluralShys

Past tense of shy: shied

Origin of shy

From Middle English shy (“shy”), from Old English sċēoh (“shy”), from Proto-West Germanic *skeuh (“shy, fearful”), from Proto-Germanic *skeuhaz (“shy, fearful”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian skjou (“shy”), Dutch schuw (“shy”), German scheu (“shy”), Danish sky (“shy”).

Words formed from shy

Phrases with shy

4 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with shy

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about shy

What does shy mean?
Shy means easily frightened; timid.
What is shy in Hindi?
Shy in Hindi is लज्जावान (lajjāvān). See Shy meaning in Hindi.
How do you use shy in a sentence?
Graham Norton: But the people coming up to you now, like the Americans, well, you know, the Americans, they're not shy, the Americans. / Maggie Smith: No.
What part of speech is shy?
Shy can be an adjective, a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce shy?
Shy is pronounced /ʃaɪ/.

Words near shy in the dictionary

  1. shwifty
  2. shwopping
  3. shwr.
  4. shwrs.
  5. shxt
  6. shy
  7. shy away
  8. shy away from
  9. shy bairns get noot
  10. shy bairns get nowt
  11. shy bladder

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shy (page history and authors); Shy (page history and authors); shy (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); شرمگیں (Urdu) (page history and authors); লাজুক (Bengali) (page history and authors); ശാലീനം (Malayalam) (page history and authors); shy (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); shy (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); shy (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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: en-us-shy.ogg.

Cite this entry: “shy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.