shiver

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• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈʃɪvɚ/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈʃɪvə/
• Rhymes: -ɪvə(ɹ)

Origin uncertain, perhaps an alteration of chavel, or a frequentive of sheaf.

shiver (third-person singular simple present shivers, present participle shivering, simple past and past participle shivered)

1. To tremble or shake, especially when cold or frightened.
   • 1693, Thomas Creech, The thirteenth Satire of Juvenal

     The man that shivered on the brink of sin, / Thus steeled and hardened, ventures boldly in.

   • Template:RQ:Charlotte Brontë Jane Eyre
   • 1922, Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit:

     He was shivering a little, for he had always been used to sleeping in a proper bed, and by this time his coat had worn so thin and threadbare from hugging that it was no longer any protection to him.

   • 2013 June 7, David Simpson, “Fantasy of navigation”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 188, number 26, page 36:

     Like most human activities, ballooning has sponsored heroes and hucksters and a good deal in between. For every dedicated scientist patiently recording atmospheric pressure and wind speed while shivering at high altitudes, there is a carnival barker with a bevy of pretty girls willing to dangle from a basket or parachute down to earth.

   They stood outside for hours, shivering in the frosty air.

2. (nautical, transitive) To cause to shake or tremble, as a sail, by steering close to the wind.

• ashiver
• shiverer
• shiver my timbers
• shivering owl

shiver (plural shivers)

1. The act of shivering.

   A shiver went up my spine.

   • 1907 August, Robert W[illiam] Chambers, chapter I, in The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, OCLC 24962326:

     But they had already discovered that he could be bullied, and they had it their own way; and presently Selwyn lay prone upon the nursery floor, impersonating a ladrone while pleasant shivers chased themselves over Drina, whom he was stalking.

2. (medicine) A bodily response to early hypothermia.^Wp

• send shivers down someone's spine
• shiver my timbers

• frisson

From a Germanic word, probably present in Old English though unattested, cognate with Old High German scivaro (German Schiefer (“slate”)).

shiver (plural shivers)

1. A fragment or splinter, especially of glass or stone.
2. (obsolete, UK, dialect) A thin slice; a shive.
   • 1655, Thomas Fuller, James Nichols, editor, The Church History of Britain, […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), new edition, London: […] [James Nichols] for Thomas Tegg and Son, […], published 1837, OCLC 913056315:

     a shiver of their own loaf

3. (geology) A variety of blue slate.
4. (nautical) A sheave or small wheel in a pulley.
5. A small wedge, as for fastening the bolt of a window shutter.
6. (obsolete, UK, dialect) A spindle.

shiver (third-person singular simple present shivers, present participle shivering, simple past and past participle shivered)

1. To break into splinters or fragments.
   • 1614–1615, Homer, “The First Book of Homer’s Odysseys”, in Geo[rge] Chapman, transl., Homer’s Odysses. […], London: […] Rich[ard] Field [and William Jaggard], for Nathaniell Butter, published 1615, OCLC 1002865976; republished in The Odysseys of Homer, […], volume I, London: John Russell Smith, […], 1857, OCLC 987451380, lines 1–4, page 1:

     The man, O Muse, inform, that many a way / Wound with his wisdom to his wished stay; / That wandered wondrous far, when he the town / Of sacred Troy had sack'd and shivered down; […]

   • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “chapter 24”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, OCLC 57395299:

     But if, in the face of all this, you still declare that whaling has no aesthetically noble associations connected with it, then am I ready to shiver fifty lances with you there, and unhorse you with a split helmet every time.

   • 1904, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Six Napoleons, Norton (2005), page 1034:

     he found a plaster bust of Napoleon, which stood with several other works of art upon the counter, lying shivered into fragments.

   • 2010, Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22, Atlantic 2011, p. 183:

     A whole series of fault lines radiated away from this Lisbon earthquake, all of them shivering the structures of traditional order.

Origin uncertain

shiver (plural shivers)

1. Collective noun for a group of sharks

• hivers, shrive