Other forms: sheens
A sheen is a soft shine on a surface. A silky sheen, the sheen of the wood, lose its sheen.
It is gentler than a gloss and comes off the whole surface rather than in a hard highlight, which is why it suits fabric, hair and polished wood. In Old English the word was an adjective meaning beautiful or bright, and the noun came much later.
1nounsheenA soft shine on a surface.
“Her hair had a healthy sheen after she started using the new oil.”
sheen is a shine.
Old English sciene meant beautiful or bright. The noun sense of a soft shine developed later.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)kewh₁-
Proto-Germanic
*skauniz — beautiful
Proto-West Germanic
*skaunī
Old English
sċīene — beautiful, fair, bright, brilliant, light
Middle English
shene
English, today
sheen
From Middle English shene, schene, from Old English sċīene (“beautiful, fair, bright, brilliant, light”), from Proto-West Germanic skaunī, from Proto-Germanic skauniz (“beautiful”), from Proto-Indo-European (s)kewh₁-. Cognate with Scots schene, scheine (“beautiful, fair, attractive”), stq skeen (“clean, pure”), West Frisian skjin (“nice, clean”), Dutch schoon (“clean, beautiful, fair”), German schön (“beautiful”), Danish skøn (“beautiful”), Norwegian Bokmål skjønn (“beautiful”), Norwegian Nynorsk skjønn (“beautiful”), Swedish skön (“beautiful, fine”). Compare also the loanword Finnish kaunis (“beautiful”). See also English show.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA