shiver

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shiver

Wikipedia

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈʃɪvɚ/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈʃɪvə/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Hyphenation: shi‧ver
• Rhymes: -ɪvə(ɹ)
• Homophone: shiva (non-rhotic)

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.

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

   • 1693, Thomas Creech, The thirteenth Satire of Juvenal:

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

   • 1847 October 16, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], “CHAPTER XVIII”, in Jane Eyre. An Autobiography. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Smith, Elder, and Co., […], →OCLC:

     Mr. Mason, shivering as some one chanced to open the door, asked for more coal to be put on the fire, which had burnt out its flame, though its mass of cinder still shone hot and red. The footman who brought the coal, in going out, stopped near Mr. Eshton's chair, and said something to him in a low voice, of which I heard only the words, "old woman,"—"quite troublesome."

   • 1921 June, Margery Williams, “The Velveteen Rabbit: Or How Toys Become Real”, in Harper’s Bazar, volume LVI, number 6 (2504 overall), New York, N.Y.: International Magazine Company, →ISSN, →OCLC:

     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.

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

• ashiver
• shiverer
• shiver my sides
• shiver my soul
• 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:

     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, send a shiver down someone's spine
• shiver my timbers, shiver me 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.
   1. (Lincolnshire, Norfolk) A splinter of wood embedded in the flesh
2. (obsolete, UK, dialect) A thin slice; a shive.
   • 1655, Thomas Fuller, The Church-history of Britain; […], London: […] Iohn Williams […], →OCLC, (please specify |book=I to XI):

     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; republished in The Odysseys of Homer, […], volume I, London: John Russell Smith, […], 1857, →OCLC, page 1, lines 1–4:

     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; […]

     The spelling has been modernized.

   • 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:

     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, published 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, published 2011, page 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, shevri, shrive