shimmer
UK /ˈʃɪm.ə(ɹ)/ · US /ˈʃɪm.ɚ/ verb, noun
Forms shimmers shimmering shimmered
- verb (intransitive) To shine tremulously or intermittently; to gleam faintly.
- verb 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 A faint or veiled and tremulous gleam or shining.
- noun (signal processing) A measure of the irregularities in the loudness of a particular pitch over time.
- noun (crime) 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
Etymology
From Middle English schimeren, from Old English sċymrian, sċimrian, sċimerian, from Proto-Germanic *skimarōną. Cognate with Dutch schemeren, German schimmern.
From shim + -er.
Webster’s 1913
- verb To shine with a tremulous or intermittent light; to shine faintly; to gleam; to glisten; to glimmer.
- noun A faint, tremulous light; a gleaming; a glimmer.
Etymology [OE. schimeren, AS. scimerian; akin to scimian, sciman, to glitter, D. schemeren, G. schimmern, Dan. skimre, Sw. skimra, AS. scima a light, brightness, Icel. skima, Goth. skeima a torch, a lantern, and E. shine. sq. root157. See Shine, v. i.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “shimmer”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details