Other forms: shied, shying
Shy is being quiet and uneasy with people you do not know. The child who goes behind a leg when the door opens; the guest who says almost nothing for an hour and then turns out to be very funny.
Shy of also means short of: two hundred pounds shy of the target, a week shy of his sixtieth birthday. A horse will shy at a flapping bag, jumping sideways in fright, and people fight shy of things they would rather not face. As an ending it means wary of — camera-shy, work-shy, gun-shy, publicity-shy. The noun is shyness and the comparative is shyer. Keep the edges clear: shy is not cold, not rude and not modest, and it eases once the person knows you.
1adjectiveshyQuiet and uncomfortable around other people, especially strangers.~16%
“He was too shy to ask anyone for directions.”
2adjectiveshortShort of an amount or a point in time (with 'of').~82%
“The fund is still a few thousand shy of its target.”
3verbhorseOf a horse: to jump aside suddenly in fright.~2%
“A plastic bag on the hedge was enough to make the horse shy.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 8 sentences found in the wild and placed 6 of them on a sense (2 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Old English sċēoh meant shy, and behind it stands Proto-Germanic *skeuhaz, 'shy, fearful'. German scheu, Dutch schuw and Danish sky are the same word, unchanged in meaning. The root is plain fear and flinching, which is why a horse still shies at a shadow long before a person is called shy.
Proto-Germanic
*skeuhaz — shy, fearful
Proto-West Germanic
*skeuh — shy, fearful
Old English
sċēoh — shy
Middle English
shy — shy
English, today
shy
From Middle English shy (“shy”), from Old English sċēoh (“shy”), from Proto-West Germanic skeuh (“shy, fearful”), from Proto-Germanic skeuhaz (“shy, fearful”). Cognate with stq skjou (“shy”), Dutch schuw (“shy”), German scheu (“shy”), Danish sky (“shy”). From Middle English shy.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA