shine

• (US, UK) enPR: shīn, IPA^(key): /ʃaɪn/, /ʃaːɪn/

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• Rhymes: -aɪn

From Middle English shinen, schinen (preterite schon, past participle schinen), from Old English scīnan (“to shine, flash; be resplendent”; preterite scān, past participle scinen), from Proto-West Germanic *skīnan (“to shine”), from Proto-Germanic *skīnaną (“to shine”).

shine (third-person singular simple present shines, present participle shining, simple past and past participle shone or shined)

1. (intransitive, copulative) To emit or reflect light so as to glow.
   • 1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], OCLC 1042815524, part I, page 194:

     The water shone pacifically; the sky, without a speck, was a benign immensity of unstained light; the very mist on the Essex marshes was like a gauzy and radiant fabric, hung from the wooded rises inland, and draping the low shores in diaphanous folds.

   • 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 20, in The China Governess‎:

     ‘No. I only opened the door a foot and put my head in. The street lamps shine into that room. I could see him. He was all right. Sleeping like a great grampus. Poor, poor chap.’

2. (intransitive, copulative) To reflect light.
3. (intransitive, copulative) To distinguish oneself; to excel.
   • 1867, Frederick William Robinson, No Man's Friend, Harper & Brothers, page 91:

     “ […] I was grateful to you for giving him a year’s schooling—where he shined at it—and for putting him as a clerk in your counting-house, where he shined still more.”

   • 2011 January 15, Phil McNulty, “Tottenham 0 - 0 Man Utd”, in BBC‎:

     It prompted an exchange of substitutions as Jermain Defoe replaced Palacios and Javier Hernandez came on for Berbatov, who had failed to shine against his former club.

   My nephew tried other sports before deciding on football, which he shone at right away, quickly becoming the star of his school team.

4. (intransitive, copulative) To be effulgent in splendour or beauty.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, OCLC 960102938, stanza 10:

     So proud she shyned in her Princely state.

   • 1728, [Alexander Pope], “(please specify the page)”, in The Dunciad. An Heroic Poem. […], Dublin; London: […] A. Dodd, OCLC 1033416756:

     Once brightest shined this child of heat and air.

5. (intransitive, copulative) To be eminent, conspicuous, or distinguished; to exhibit brilliant intellectual powers.
   • c. 1713, Jonathan Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects

     Few are qualified to shine in company; but it in most men's power to be agreeable.

6. (intransitive, copulative) To be immediately apparent.
7. (transitive) To create light with (a flashlight, lamp, torch, or similar).
   • 2007, David Lynn Goleman, Legend: An Event Group Thriller, St. Martin’s Press, published 2008, →ISBN, page 318:

     As Jenks shined the large spotlight on the water, he saw a few bubbles and four long wakes leading away from an expanding circle of blood.

   I shone my light into the darkness to see what was making the noise.

8. (transitive) To cause to shine, as a light or by reflected light.
   • 1625, Francis [Bacon], “Of Goodness and Goodness of Nature”, in The Essayes […], 3rd edition, London: […] Iohn Haviland for Hanna Barret, OCLC 863521290:

     He [God] doth not rain wealth, nor shine honour and virtues, upon men equally.

   in hunting, to shine the eyes of a deer at night by throwing a light on them

• (to emit light): beam, glow, radiate
• (to reflect light): gleam, glint, glisten, glitter, reflect
• (to distinguish oneself): excel
• (to make smooth and shiny by rubbing): wax, buff, polish, furbish, burnish

• (to emit light): beam, flash, glare, glimmer, shimmer, twinkle

• beshine
• rise and shine
• take a shine to

shine (countable and uncountable, plural shines)

1. Brightness from a source of light.
   • 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, a Romance, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, OCLC 223202227:

     the distant shine of the celestial city

2. Brightness from reflected light.
3. Excellence in quality or appearance; splendour.
4. Shoeshine.
5. Sunshine.
   • 1685, John Dryden, Sylvae

     be fair or foul, or rain or shine

6. (slang) Moonshine; illicitly brewed alcoholic drink.
7. (cricket) The amount of shininess on a cricket ball, or on each side of the ball.
8. (slang) A liking for a person; a fancy.

   She's certainly taken a shine to you.

9. (archaic, slang) A caper; an antic; a row.

• (brightness from a source of light): effulgence, radiance, radiancy, refulgence, refulgency
• (brightness from reflected light): luster
• (excellence in quality or appearance): brilliance, splendor
• (shoeshine): See shoeshine
• (sunshine): See sunshine
• (slang: moonshine): See moonshine

From the noun shine, or perhaps continuing Middle English schinen in its causative uses, from Old English scīn (“brightness, shine”), and also Middle English schenen, from Old English scǣnan (“to render brilliant, make shine”), from Proto-Germanic *skainijaną, causative of *skīnaną (“to shine”).

shine (third-person singular simple present shines, present participle shining, simple past and past participle shined)

1. (transitive) To cause (something) to shine; put a shine on (something); polish (something).

   He shined my shoes until they were polished smooth and gleaming.

2. (transitive, cricket) To polish a cricket ball using saliva and one’s clothing.

• (to polish): polish, smooth, smoothen

• Enshi, Heins, Hines, NIEHS, hsien

shine

1. Lenited form of sine.

shine

1. Lenited form of sine.

shine

1. Rōmaji transcription of しね

shine

1. Alternative form of schyne (“shin”)

shine

1. Alternative form of schinen