shivers

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of shiver.

   The first cold shivers set in as the wet clothes clung to his skin.

   Sudden shivers swept over the crowd when the lights cut out.

   Note

   One spelling covers two quite different plurals. Shivers can be bouts of trembling, from cold or fear or as an early sign of hypothermia. They can also be fragments: shivers of glass or stone. In Norfolk speech a shiver is also a splinter of wood lodged in the skin. Context sorts them out: trembling shivers set in or sweep over people, while broken shivers are scattered and swept up.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of shiver.

   He shivers in the unheated workshop until the stove finally warms the room.

   The thin sapling shivers in every gust off the lake.

   Note

   This present-tense form is spelled exactly like the plural noun, so the sentence does the sorting: a sapling shivers, but the cold brings on shivers. The verb usually takes no object, whether it means trembling or breaking into splinters as glass does. Sailing keeps a transitive use. A helmsman shivers the sail by steering close to the wind, which sets the canvas shaking.

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