different between shimmer vs shimmery

English

Etymology

From Middle English schimeren, from Old English s?ymrian, s?imrian, s?imerian, from Proto-Germanic *skimar?n?. Cognate with Dutch schemeren, German schimmern.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /???m?(?)/

Verb

shimmer (third-person singular simple present shimmers, present participle shimmering, simple past and past participle shimmered)

1. (intransitive) To shine tremulously or intermittently; to gleam faintly.

   Synonyms: twinkle, sparkle, glisten, glimmer

   • 1581, John Studley (translator), Medea, Act 4, in Seneca his Tenne Tragedies, London: Thomas Marsh, p. 135,^[1]

     With dusky shimmering wanny globe, her lampe doth pale appeare

   • 1850, Alfred Tennyson, The Princess: A Medley, London: Edward Moxon, 3rd edition, Conclusion, p. 173,^[2]

     The shimmering glimpses of a stream

   • 1954, J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, New York: Ballantine Books, 1973, Book 2, Chapter 2, p. 339,^[3]

     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.

   • 2018, Tsitsi Dangarembga, This Mournable Body, Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, Chapter 22,^[4]

     Pale tourists, tired but excited, emerge like apparitions from the heat haze that shimmers over the tarmac.

Derived terms

• ashimmer
• shimmerer
• shimmer stick
• shimmery

Translations

Noun

shimmer (plural shimmers)

1. A faint or veiled and tremulous gleam or shining.

   Synonym: glimmer

   • 1847, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, London: Smith, Elder, Volume 2, Chapter 10, p. 254,^[5]

     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.

   • 1922, Katherine Anne Porter, “María Concepción” in Flowering Judas and Other Stories, New York: The Modern Library, 1940, p. 6,^[6]

     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.

   • 2013, Rachel Kushner, The Flamethrowers, New York: Vintage, 2014, Chapter 16, p. 294,^[7]

     He’d aimed film lamps at the rectangular pools, which sent reflections up the gallery wall in veined and fractured shimmers.

2. (signal processing) A measure of the irregularities in the loudness of a particular pitch over time.

   Coordinate term: jitter

   • 2010, Daniel R. Boone, The Voice and Voice Therapy, Pearson College Division (?ISBN)

     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.

Translations

Further reading

• shimmer in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• shimmer in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

Yola

Etymology

From Middle English shimeren, from Old English s?ymrian, s?imrian, s?imerian.

Verb

shimmer (present participle shimmereen)

1. to glitter

References

• Jacob Poole (1867) , William Barnes, editor, A glossary, with some pieces of verse, of the old dialect of the English colony in the baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, J. Russell Smith, ?ISBN

English

Etymology

From shimmer +? -y.

Adjective

shimmery (comparative more shimmery, superlative most shimmery)

1. Shining with a veiled, trembling or intermittent light.

   Synonyms: ashimmer, shimmering

   • 1895, Rudyard Kipling, “Red Dog” in The Second Jungle Book, London: Macmillan, p. 187,^[1]

     The length of the gorge on both sides was hung as it were with black shimmery velvet curtains, and Mowgli sank as he looked, for those were the clotted millions of the sleeping bees.

   • 2009, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “The Arrangers of Marriage” in The Thing Around Your Neck, New York: Knopf, p. 180,^[2]

     […] Aunty Ada would base her prostitute judgment on Nia’s lipstick, a shimmery orange, and the eye shadow—similar to the shade of the lipstick—that clung to her heavy lids.

Derived terms

• shimmeriness

Anagrams

• misrhyme