shining

1. 1.

   the work of making something smooth and shiny by rubbing or waxing it

   “the shining of shoes provided a meager living”

   “every Sunday he gave his car a good polishing”

   Synonymspolishing

   Broaderwork

   Narrowershoeshine

Other forms of shining

plural

shinings·

comparative

shininger·

superlative

shiningest·

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 shining

What does shining mean?

shining means "marked by exceptional merit". That is the primary sense; the word has 4 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in shining?

shining has 2 syllables: shi-ning. The stress falls on "shi". In IPA it is /ˈʃaɪnɪŋ/.

What is another word for shining?

Close synonyms include bright, burnished, lustrous, shiny, glistening. 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 shining a common word?

shining is banded "Common" — everyday vocabulary in speech and writing. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.