Shivering

How to spell shivering

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce shivering

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does shivering mean?

1. verbTrembling or shaking slightly, usually because of cold or fear.
2. adjectiveDescribing someone or something that is trembling with cold or fear.

Shivering in a sentence

• verb

  She stood shivering at the bus stop in the freezing rain.

• adjective

  The shivering patient was wrapped in a warm blanket by the nurse.

• verb

  The dog was shivering after its bath, so we dried it quickly.

• adjective

  A shivering crowd waited outside the stadium gates before dawn.

Where does shivering come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows out of the verb 'shiver', which appears in Middle English as 'chiveren' or 'shiveren', meaning to shake or quake with cold or fear. Its earlier roots are genuinely obscure; scholars connect it loosely to Old English and broader Germanic words for the jaw and chattering teeth, but no single clean ancestor survives. The sense has stayed remarkably stable across the centuries: the trembling of a body that is cold or frightened. The '-ing' ending is the ordinary English participle suffix, turning the action of shivering into a continuous state. Because the base verb keeps a single 'v' and a single 'r', the spelling stays simple, with no doubling when '-ing' is added.

How the word is built

• shiver (to shake or tremble)
• -ing (present participle / adjective suffix)