shim

• IPA^(key): /ʃɪm/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪm

Unknown; from Kent.[1][2] 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.

shim (plural shims)

1. A wedge.
2. 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.

3. (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.

4. A kind of shallow plow used in tillage to break the ground and clear it of weeds.
5. A small metal device used to pick open a lock.

shim (third-person singular simple present shims, present participle shimming, simple past and past participle shimmed)

1. To fit one or more shims to a piece of machinery.
2. To adjust something by using shims.
3. To adjust the homogeneity of a magnetic field, after the mechanical devices once used for the purpose.
4. (computing, transitive) To intercept and modify calls to (an API), usually for compatibility purposes.

Blend of she +‎ him.

shim (plural shims)

1. (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?

2. (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."

• shim-pua marriage (etymologically unrelated)

• HMIS, HMIs, Mish, hims, mish

shim

1. eye

shim (plural shimlar)

1. pants