# shim
## English
### Pronunciation

* IPA: /ʃɪm/
* Audio (Southern England):(file)
* Rhymes: -ɪm

### Etymology 1

Unknown; from Kent. Originally a piece of iron attached to a plow; sense of “thin piece of wood” from 1723, sense of “thin piece of material used for alignment or support” from 1860.

#### Noun

shim (plural shims)
* A wedge.
* A thin piece of material, sometimes tapered, used for alignment or support.
** 2016 January 30, Jeff Howell, “Swinging doors: it's not open and shut”, in The Daily Telegraph (Property), page 15:The second adjustment [to a door that keeps swinging open] will require the screws to be loosened, and a shim or packing piece pushed behind the hinge to bring it into line.
* (computing) A small library that transparently intercepts and modifies calls to an API, usually for compatibility purposes.
** 2010, Russell Smith, Least Privilege Security for Windows 7, Vista and XP:Shims intercept Win32 API calls from legacy applications, as defined by system administrators, and then modify the call before passing the code to Windows for execution.
* A kind of shallow plow used in tillage to break the ground and clear it of weeds.
* A small metal device used to pick open a lock.
    Synonym: slim jim

##### Translations
#### Verb

shim (third-person singular simple present shims, present participle shimming, simple past and past participle shimmed)
* To fit one or more shims to a piece of machinery.
* To adjust something by using shims.
* To adjust the homogeneity of a magnetic field, after the mechanical devices once used for the purpose.
* (computing, transitive) To intercept and modify calls to (an API), usually for compatibility purposes.

##### Translations
### Etymology 2

Blend of she +‎ him.

#### Noun

shim (plural shims)
* (informal, often derogatory) A transsexual person, especially a trans woman; (loosely) a drag queen or transvestite.
    Synonym: (derogatory) he-she
** 1998, The Seneca review, Hobart Student Association:He — or "Shim" (she/him), as film director John Waters called the actor Divine — was as much a paradoxical as a perverse fellow.
** 1995 May 30, The Advocate, page 11:"We call him shim— short for 'she-him.'
** 2004 July 26, grdog, “Wisdom of Great Leaders”, in alt.bitch.pork‎ (Usenet):Yes Maam, or Sir or just what / how do you address a shim?
* (informal, often derogatory) A person characterised by both male and female traits, or by ambiguous male-female traits; a hermaphrodite.
** 2009, Laurie Notaro, The Idiot Girl and the Flaming Tantrum of Death: Reflections on Revenge, Germophobia, and Laser Hair Removal, Ballantine Books, →ISBN, page 89:[…] that I was a hermaphrodite, and that things would probably be getting much, much worse as other "parts" of me began to grow manly and I made the full transformation into a "shim."

##### Translations
#### See also

* shis

### References

* ↑ Douglas Harper (2001–2024) “shim”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.
* ↑ “shim”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.

### See also

* shim-pua marriage (etymologically unrelated)

### Anagrams

* Mish, hims, HMIs, Hims, HMIS, him's, mish

## Kanuri
### Noun

shim
* eye

## Uzbek
### Noun

shim (plural shimlar)
* pants