shimmy

1. 1.

   an abnormal wobble in a motor vehicle (especially in the front wheels)

   “he could feel the shimmy in the steering wheel”

   Broaderwobble
2. 2.

   a woman's sleeveless undergarment

   Synonymschemiseshiftslipteddy

   Broaderundergarment

   Partsstrap
3. 3.

   lively dancing (usually to ragtime music) with much shaking of the shoulders and hips

   Broadersocial dancing

1. 1.

   tremble or shake

   “His voice wobbled with restrained emotion”

   Synonymswobble

   Broadervibrate
2. 2.

   dance a shimmy

   Broaderdance

   dancing

Other forms of shimmy

plural

shimmies·

past tense or participle

shimmied

present participle

shimmying·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about shimmy

What does shimmy mean?

shimmy means "an abnormal wobble in a motor vehicle (especially in the front wheels)". That is the primary sense; the word has 5 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in shimmy?

shimmy has 2 syllables: shim-my. The stress falls on "shim". In IPA it is /ˈʃɪmi/.

What is another word for shimmy?

Close synonyms include chemise, shift, slip, teddy, wobble. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is shimmy a common word?

shimmy is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.