sheen

• IPA^(key): /ʃiːn/, enPR: shēn

  • Audio (Southern England):

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• Rhymes: -iːn

From Middle English shene, schene, from Old English sċīene (“beautiful, fair, bright, brilliant, light”), from Proto-West Germanic *skaunī, from Proto-Germanic *skauniz (“beautiful”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kewh₁-.

Cognate with Scots schene, scheine (“beautiful, fair, attractive”), Saterland Frisian skeen (“clean, pure”), West Frisian skjin (“nice, clean”), Dutch schoon (“clean, beautiful, fair”), German schön (“beautiful”), Danish skøn (“beautiful”), Norwegian Bokmål skjønn (“beautiful”), Norwegian Nynorsk skjønn (“beautiful”), Swedish skön (“beautiful, fine”). Compare also the loanword Finnish kaunis (“beautiful”). See also English show.

sheen (comparative sheener, superlative sheenest)

1. (rare, usually poetic or archaic) Beautiful, good-looking, attractive, fair; bright, radiant; shiny.
   • 1600, [Torquato Tasso], “(please specify |book=1 to 20)”, in Edward Fairefax [i.e., Edward Fairfax], transl., Godfrey of Bulloigne, or The Recouerie of Ierusalem. […], London: […] Ar[nold] Hatfield, for I[saac] Iaggard and M[atthew] Lownes, →OCLC:

     Up rose each warrier bold and brave, / Glistening in filed steel and armor sheen.

   • 1741, The London Magazine, and Monthly Chronologer, page 430:

     The doleful Dumps I sing, and tearful Woes,
     Of Marian teeming with unlawful Throes:
     The sheenest Lass in Berkshire was she known,
     Of all that Butter fell to Reading Town: […]

   • 1811, La Belle Assemblée, page 44:

     […] Would'st hear, what dims those eyes so sheen?

   • 1814, Walter Scott, Waverley:

     Where the fountains glisten sheenest […] (ch. 12).

   • 1877, James Sharp, The Captive King and Other Poems, page 218:

     The woods, and vales were sheen as day,
     With light from its own living fountain; […]

   • 1878, The Cornhill Magazine, volume 37, page 449:

     None other but the chroniclers of so many brawny feasts in the hard-eating country round Phalsburg could do justice to the splendid figure which the roast goose cut in his dish, stuffed as he was with chestnuts and truffles, and glistening with the sheenest gravy.

   • 1912, Edwin Markham, The Real America in Romance:

     Out upon the sheen waters of the river that lay grey beneath the starlight crept many shadows, silent and mysterious.

   • 1922, Early English Text Society: Original series - Issue 18, page 56:

     […] He receiveth blithely, and embraceth sweetly, the loathliest of all, and maketh them seven times sheener than the sun.

   • 2005, Jahrbuch der österreichischen Byzantinistik, volume 55, page 145:

     […] in this land you discover gold and also prized green jewels, the gold is really pure and sheen, glowing like the fire […]

   • 2015, Greg Foshee, A Crown of Jewels, a Crown of Thorns:

     In the next instant, Isaac could see only a beautiful Polynesian woman with a yellow rose in her hair, wearing a very sheen red blouse.

   • 2020, Walter Wangerin Jr., Ascent/Descent, page 45:

     Walt shovels a circle of snow in his backyard, then hoses the bare earth to a sheen ice blue.

   • 2022, K.C. Nuzum, The Child of Venlet:

     His armor was black and as sheen as glass.

2. (rare, usually poetic or archaic) Clear, pure, clean; noble, illustrious; (by extension) innocent, chaste.
   • 1822, William Tennant, The Thane of Fife: A Poem, in Six Cantos, page 48:

     […] And all her crystal springs, whence clear and sheen
     Her brooks receive the wat'ry element, […]

   • 1823, The London Magazine, volume 8, page 604:

     'Twas not when early flowers were springing,
     When skies were sheen,
     And wheat was green, […]

   • 1832, Job Durfee, What Cheer: Or, Roger Williams in Banishment, page 105:

     […] Hard by yon little fountain, clear and sheen,
     Whose swollen streamlet murmurs down the glade, […]

   • 1872, Robert Dwyer Joyce, Ballads of Irish Chivalry, page 174:

     Where rolled 'neath shimmering sun and shade,
     A forest brook the sheenest […]

   • 1916, Charles Montagu Doughty, The Titans, page 15:

     […] The boom of bees, with wings as sheen as glass.

   • 2006, Rosemary Hawley Jarman, We Speak No Treason: The White Rose Turned to Blood:

     So I went on up the slimy stair, and without the Palace gate there was a herb-seller, standing with her pannier full of sweetness, wondrous fresh and fair, a maid that looked up at me with her virgin's eyes, child-eyes clear and sheen.

   • 2022, J. McDonald, Hidden Treasures, page 8:

     We traverse the very region of romance, high cliffs overhanging deep sheen waters, frequent bays, meandering shores fringed with dense forests - every tree more stately than the "Cedars of Lebanon."

• sheenly

sheen (countable and uncountable, plural sheens)

1. (also figuratively) Splendor; radiance; shininess.
   • 1946, Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan:

     There is a greenish sheen across the shoulders of his greasy black suit, for the morning light has of a sudden begun to dance through the bay window.

   • 2022 September 27, Kim Severson, “The Last, Painful Days of Anthony Bourdain”, in The New York Times‎^[1], →ISSN:

     Mr. Leerhsen said in an interview that he wanted to write a book without the dutiful sheen of what he called “an official Bourdain product.”

2. A thin layer of a substance (such as oil) spread on a solid or liquid surface.

   oil sheen

   • 2004, Harold McGee, chapter 1, in On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, →ISBN:

     Perhaps the simplest of sauces is the pat of butter dropped on a heap of hot vegetables, or stirred into rice or noodles, or drawn across the surface of an omelet or steak to give a sheen.

   • 2017, Jeffrey Miller, Ann Powers, Introduction to Environmental Law: Cases and Materials on Water Pollution Control, West Academic, →ISBN:

     Take the floating scum or oil sheen prohibitions. A discharger or an inspector simply can look to see if scum, or an oil sheen, is coming from a particular discharge. Assume an oil sheen begins at a discharge—is the sheen caused by that […]

sheen (third-person singular simple present sheens, present participle sheening, simple past and past participle sheened)

1. (rare, intransitive, poetic) To shine; to glisten.
   • 1812, Lord Byron, “Canto I”, in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. A Romaunt, London: […] [F]or John Murray, […]; William Blackwood, Edinburgh; and John Cumming, Dublin; by Thomas Davison, […], →OCLC, stanza XVII:

     This town, / That, sheening far, celestial seems to be.

sheen (plural sheens)

1. The letter ش in the Arabic script.

• sheen on Wikipedia.Wikipedia