Other forms: showers, showered, showering
A shower is the spray of water you stand under to get clean, and also the washing itself - 'I'm going for a shower.' The curtain sticks to your arm, the hot water runs out, and the mirror has gone white by the time you step out.
Outdoors the same word means a short burst of rain that stops as fast as it started: sunshine and showers, the forecast says. Anything falling thickly can be one - a shower of sparks off a grinder, a shower of confetti, a shower of leaves in a gale. The verb does both jobs: you shower in the morning, and you shower someone with gifts or with praise. In American English a baby shower is a party where a mother-to-be is given presents. Britain says have a shower, America says take a shower, and both are right where they stand.
1nounshowerA device that sprays water over you for washing, or the small space it stands in.~58%
“The shower in the flat only runs hot for five minutes.”
2nounactAn act of washing yourself under such a spray.~6%
“He had a quick shower before dinner.”
3nounshortA short fall of rain or snow.~6%
“Scattered showers are expected this afternoon.”
4nountogetherA lot of small things falling together.~26%
“The hammer struck the metal and sent up a shower of sparks.”
5verbyourselfTo wash yourself under a shower.~2%
“She showers before work every single day.”
6verbgiveTo give someone a great many things at once.~2%
“The crowd showered the winners with flowers.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 19 sentences found in the wild and placed 15 of them on a sense (4 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
The rain sense is the old one. Shower comes from Old English scur, from Proto-Germanic *skuro, 'storm, short shower', and probably from a Proto-Indo-European word tangled up with the north wind and cold rain. Its relatives are still recognisable across the sea: German Schauer, Swedish skur, Icelandic skur, all meaning a shower of rain.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)ḱēwer- — north, north wind, cold wind, rain shower
Proto-Germanic
*skūrō — storm, short shower
Proto-West Germanic
*skūru — shower
Old English
sċūr — shower
Middle English
schour — shower
English, today
shower
From Middle English schour (“shower”), from Old English sċūr (“shower”), from Proto-West Germanic skūru (“shower”), from Proto-Germanic skūrō (“storm, short shower”), probably from Proto-Indo-European (s)ḱēwer- (“north, north wind, cold wind, rain shower”). 2 Cognate with Dutch schoer (“downpour, heavy rainshower”), German Schauer (“shower”), Danish -, Norwegian -, and Swedish skur (“shower”), Faroese skúrur (“shower”), Icelandic skúr (“shower”), nrn skur (“squall”), Gothic 𐍃𐌺𐌿𐍂𐌰 (“storm”), Italian coro (“northwestern wind”), Spanish cauro (“northwestern wind”), be се́вер, сі́вер, Bulgarian - and Russian се́вер (“north”), Czech - and Slovak sever (“north”), mk север (“north”), Serbo-Croatian sȅvēr, sjȅvēr (“north”), Slovene sẹ́ver (“north”), Ukrainian сі́вер (“cold, cold, bitter wind”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA