shim

• IPA^(key): /ʃɪm/
• 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.
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. (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 person characterised by both male and female traits, or by ambiguous male-female traits, also called a he-she; transsexual.
   • 1998, Hobart Student Association, The Seneca review:

     He — or "Shim" (she/him), as film director John Waters called the actor Divine — was as much a paradoxical as a perverse fellow.

   • 1995, The Advocate - May 30, 1995 - Page 11:

     "We call him shim— short for 'she-him.'

2. (informal, often derogatory) hermaphrodite.

• HMIS, Mish, hims, mish

shim

1. eye