Shiny means bright with reflected light, the way polished metal and wet paint are. A new coin, a waxed car, shoes buffed until you can see the window in them.
It is the plain everyday word for the look. Glossy belongs to magazines, hair and photo paper; gleaming is for something dramatic; shiny is what a child says about a coin. Cloth can go shiny in a bad way, when trousers wear thin at the seat and start catching the light. Shiny new is a fixed pairing — a shiny new bike, a shiny new job title — and out of it comes the shiny new thing that distracts a company for a month. The family around it is easy to see: the shine, to shine, shining.
1adjectiveshinyReflecting light; bright and polished.
“He wore shiny black shoes that squeaked on the floor.”
2adjectivenewNew and eye-catching.
“Every spring brings a shiny new version nobody asked for.”
Also accepted in games: glossy
Proto-Germanic
*skīnaną — to shine
Proto-West Germanic
*skīnan — to shine
Old English
sċīnan
Middle English
shinen
English
shine
English, today
shiny
From shine + -y. shine comes 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