• (GA) IPA: /ˈʃɪvɚ/
• (RP) IPA: /ˈʃɪvə/

shiver (shivers, present participle shivering; past and past participle shivered)

1. To tremble or shake, especially when cold or frightened.

   • The man that shivered on the brink of sin, / Thus steeled and hardened, ventures boldly in.

   • 1847, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, Chapter XVIII

     Mr. Mason, shivering as some one chanced to open the door, asked for more coal to be put on the fire, which had burnt out its flame, though its mass of cinder still shone hot and red. The footman who brought the coal, in going out, stopped near Mr. Eshton's chair, and said something to him in a low voice, of which I heard only the words, "old woman,"—"quite troublesome."

   • 1922, Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

     He was shivering a little, for he had always been used to sleeping in a proper bed, and by this time his coat had worn so thin and threadbare from hugging that it was no longer any protection to him.

   They stood outside for hours, shivering in the frosty air.
2. (nautical, transitive) To cause to shake or tremble, as a sail, by steering close to the wind.

• French: frissonner
• German: zittern
• Italian: rabbrividire, tremare
• Portuguese: tiritar, tremer
• Russian: дрожа́ть
• Spanish: tiritar, temblar de frío

shiver (plural shivers)

1. The act of shivering.

   A shiver went up my spine.

   • 1907, Robert William Chambers, chapter I, in The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, OCLC 24962326 ↗:

     But they had already discovered that he could be bullied, and they had it their own way; and presently Selwyn lay prone upon the nursery floor, impersonating a ladrone while pleasant shivers chased themselves over Drina, whom he was stalking.

2. (medicine) A bodily response to early hypothermia.^Shivering

• French: frisson
• German: Zittern
• Italian: brivido, tremore
• Portuguese: calafrio, tremedeira, tremura
• Russian: дрожь
• Spanish: escalofrío, calofrío, estremecimiento, estremezón (Latin America), espeluzno (Mexico), repeluzno

• French: frisson
• Spanish: escalofrío, calofrío, tiritón

shiver (plural shivers)

1. A fragment or splinter, especially of glass or stone.
2. (obsolete, UK, dialect) A thin slice; a shive.

   • a shiver of their own loaf

3. (geology) A variety of blue slate.
4. (nautical) A sheave or small wheel in a pulley.
5. A small wedge, as for fastening the bolt of a window shutter.
6. (obsolete, UK, dialect) A spindle.

• Italian: scheggia

shiver (shivers, present participle shivering; past and past participle shivered)

1. To break into splinters or fragments.
   • 1614–1615, Homer, “The First Book of Homer’s Odysseys”, in Geo[rge] Chapman, transl., Homer’s Odysses. […], imprinted at London: By Rich[ard] Field [and William Jaggard], for Nathaniell Butter, published 1615, OCLC 1002865976 ↗; republished in The Odysseys of Homer, […], volume I, London: John Russell Smith, […], 1857, OCLC 987451380 ↗, lines 1–4, page 1 ↗:

     The man, O Muse, inform, that many a way / Wound with his wisdom to his wished stay; / That wandered wondrous far, when he the town / Of sacred Troy had sack'd and shivered down; {{...}

   • 1851, Herman Melville, Moby Dick, chapter 24

     But if, in the face of all this, you still declare that whaling has no aesthetically noble associations connected with it, then am I ready to shiver fifty lances with you there, and unhorse you with a split helmet every time.

   • 1904, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Six Napoleons, Norton (2005), page 1034:

     he found a plaster bust of Napoleon, which stood with several other works of art upon the counter, lying shivered into fragments.

   • 2010, Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22, Atlantic 2011, p. 183:

     A whole series of fault lines radiated away from this Lisbon earthquake, all of them shivering the structures of traditional order.

1. Surname