Other forms: shining, shines, shone, shined
To shine is to give out light. The sun shining through a gap in the curtains, a torch shining down a dark corridor, a wet road shining under the streetlamps.
It works both ways round: the lamp shines, and you shine a torch at something. It also means to look bright and polished — hair shining after a wash, a floor shining after a scrub — and to do something so well that people notice: she shines at maths, he really shone in the second half. The past tense splits, and this catches everyone. Light shone (the sun shone all week), but polishing takes shined (he shined his boots). The noun is a shine — give the table a shine — and take a shine to someone means to like them straight away. Rain or shine means whatever the weather decides to do.
1verbshineTo give out light.
“A single lamp was shining in the upstairs window.”
2verbpointTo point a light at something.
“Shine the torch under the sofa and see if it is there.”
3verbbrightTo be bright and glossy, the way polished things are.
“The kitchen floor was shining after all that scrubbing.”
4verbexcelTo be noticeably good at something.
“She shines whenever she gets to talk about her own work.”
synonyms: excel
5verbuntilTo polish something until it gleams.
“He shines his boots every Sunday night.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Also accepted in games: glow
Old English sċīnan meant exactly what shine means now, and it came from Proto-West Germanic *skīnan and Proto-Germanic *skīnaną, both also just meaning to shine. The cousins are still recognisable: German scheinen, Dutch schijnen, Swedish skina. A thousand years and the word has barely moved.
Proto-Germanic
*skīnaną — to shine
Proto-West Germanic
*skīnan — to shine
Old English
sċīnan
Middle English
shinen
English, today
shine
From Middle English shinen, schinen (preterite schon, past participle schinen), from Old English sċīnan “to shine, flash; be resplendent”; preterite sċān, past participle sċinen, from Proto-West Germanic skīnan (“to shine”), from Proto-Germanic skīnaną (“to shine”). Cognate with Dutch schijnen, German scheinen, Danish and Norwegian Bokmål skinne, Norwegian Nynorsk and Swedish skina, Faroese and Icelandic skína.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA