Other forms: shimmying, shimmies
To shimmy is to move the body with a shaking sideways motion. Shimmy across, a shimmy of the shoulders, shimmying up a rope.
The dance move shakes the shoulders and hips while the rest stays still, and the shimmy was a jazz-age craze that several cities tried to ban. It also means to move by wriggling — shimmy up a drainpipe, shimmy through a gap. In cars, shimmy is an unwanted side-to-side wobble in the steering, usually from an unbalanced wheel.
1verbshimmyTo move the body with a shaking sideways motion.
“She shimmied across the dance floor in a sparkly dress.”
2noununwantedAn unwanted wobble in a vehicle's steering.
“There's a shimmy in the steering wheel at high speed, so the garage will check the tyres.”
shimmy is a shaking movement.
The word is a back-formation from chemise, misheard as a plural — the shimmy was first the name of the garment, and the dance was named after the way it moved.
A a back-formation from chemise (mistaken for a plural).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire