Sheen

How to spell sheen

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce sheen

What does sheen mean?

1. nounA soft, glossy brightness reflected from a surface.

Sheen in a sentence

• The new floor wax gave the boards a warm sheen.

• A healthy diet had restored the sheen to her hair.

Where does sheen come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word traces back to the Old English adjective sciene (also spelled scene), which meant 'beautiful', 'fair', or 'bright', and it belongs to the same Germanic family as the modern German schon, meaning 'beautiful'. For centuries it lived as an adjective describing something radiant or lovely rather than as a noun. By the time of early modern English the older adjective had largely faded, and the spelling and sense were reshaped under the strong pull of the unrelated verb 'shine', so that sheen came to mean a soft, glossy brightness on a surface. That gradual shift from 'beautiful' to 'gleaming lustre' is why the modern meaning feels so close to shine even though the two words have separate roots. The double 'e' spelling is the trap worth remembering: it looks like it should rhyme with and copy 'shine', but it keeps its own native 'ee' from the old form.

How the word is built

• sheen (from Old English sciene/scene: beautiful, bright)