shimmer means A faint or veiled and tremulous gleam or shining. It carries an Arena rating of 1706, earned across 5 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, shimmer ranks #185 of 17,126 for Most Elegant Words, #769 of 17,127 for Most Vivid Words, #812 of 17,130 for Most Beautiful Words, #1,114 of 17,134 for Most Malleable Words.
shimmer is pronounced /ˈʃɪm.ə(ɹ)/.
Why “shimmer” is a great word
To shine with a soft, wavering, or intermittent light. From Middle English *schimeren*, from Old English *sċymrian*, *sċimrian*, *sċimerian* ("to glitter, shimmer"), from Proto-Germanic *skimarōną. Unlike "glimmer," which suggests a faint and distant flicker, or "glitter," which implies a hard, faceted sparkle, shimmer is the gentle, liquid dance of light upon a surface. It is the heat-haze rising from summer asphalt, the tremulous mirage on a hot road, the quiet, molten sheen of moonlight on a still, dark lake—the visible sigh of matter becoming briefly, softly, immaterial.
Etymology
From Middle English schimeren, from Old English sċymrian, sċimrian, sċimerian, from Proto-Germanic *skimarōną. Cognate with Dutch schemeren, German schimmern.
noun
- A faint or veiled and tremulous gleam or shining.e.g.“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. An Autobiography. […], volume II, London: Smith, Elder, and Co., […], →OCLC, page 254:
- A measure of the irregularities in the loudness of a particular pitch over time.
- 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.
verb
- To shine tremulously or intermittently; to gleam faintly.e.g.“1581, John Studley (translator), Medea, Act 4, in Seneca his Tenne Tragedies, London: Thomas Marsh, p. 135,
With dusky shimmering wanny globe, her lampe doth pale appeare”
- 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.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).