Shine

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /ʃaɪn/

Definitions

1. To emit or reflect bright light, or to polish something until it gleams
2. To produce or send forth light, as well as to make something glossy through polishing or to achieve excellence in a specific area
3. To give off illumination while also enhancing the brightness of a surface through rubbing or to attain a high level of success

Etymology: The verb "shine" has a surprisingly tangled ancestry in English. Its Old English form, "sċīnan," meant "to shine, flash; be resplendent," and it passed into Middle English as "shinen" and "schinen," with a past tense "schon" that English eventually dropped in favour of regular forms. Its close relatives are still spoken across the North Sea and beyond: Dutch "schijnen," German "scheinen," Swedish "skina," and Icelandic "skína" all share the same root, which reaches back to a Proto-Germanic "*skīnaną." The word is thus a family member of a whole cluster of Germanic languages, not a borrowing. The verb also has a sibling that helped shape it. Old English had a causative verb, "scǣnan," meaning "to render brilliant, make shine," built from the same root. Shine was a verb that could make things shine, not merely glow on its own, and that causative sense seems to have fed into the English word, possibly alongside the noun "scīn," meaning "brightness." Shine as a noun and as a verb therefore grew up together, each reinforcing the other.

Synonyms: glow, radiate, gleam, sparkle, luster

Antonyms: dull, fade, darken, obscure, cloud