Shine

How to spell shine

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce shine

What does shine mean?

1. verbTo give off or reflect bright light.
2. nounA bright glossy surface or polish, especially on something cleaned or buffed.

Shine in a sentence

• verb

  The desk lamp will shine directly onto the keyboard.

• noun

  A quick buff gave the leather boots a deep shine.

• verb

  Polished steel can shine under the bright showroom lights.

• noun

  The new wax left a lasting shine on the car bonnet.

Where does shine come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Shine descends from the Old English verb scinan, meaning 'to give out light, to be radiant', and it has carried that same core meaning for well over a thousand years. The Old English form grew from a common Germanic root that also produced the German scheinen and the Dutch schijnen, both still meaning 'to shine' or 'to seem', which hints that the idea of 'appearing' and 'giving off light' were once closely linked. Some scholars connect this Germanic family back to an even older Indo-European root meaning 'to be pale or grey', the same ancient source thought to lie behind the colour word that became 'shimmer'. The spelling has stayed pleasingly regular: the long 'i' sound is written with the silent 'e' on the end, a pattern English uses again and again in words like mine, fine and pine. Because it is such an old native word, shine has always been spelled the same way across British, American and Canadian English, with no continental respelling to muddy it.

How the word is built

• shine (from Old English scinan, to give off light); a single Germanic root with no prefix or suffix