sheen
1 Americannoun
noun
-
a gleaming or glistening brightness; lustre
-
poetic splendid clothing
adjective
Related Words
See polish.
Other Word Forms
- sheenful adjective
- sheenless adjective
- sheenly adverb
- sheeny adjective
Etymology
Origin of sheen
First recorded before 900; (adjective) Middle English sheene “beautiful, bright, shining,” Old English scēne; cognate with German schön; (verb) Middle English s(c)henen, derivative of the adjective; (noun) derivative of the adjective
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Baseball’s rules were standardized by middle-class Manhattan professionals who “squeezed all the wildness of the folk game into their polished diamond,” giving it a sheen of gentility.
From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 27, 2026
Anytime the film veers into computer-generated territory, it takes on a sheen of cheesy artifice.
From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 6, 2026
Later, the counter began to crowd with flaky croissants, sticky pastry, brioches with amber sheen.
From Salon • Feb. 5, 2026
It comes across like a lower-fi version of such early punk groups as Suicide and Television with a digital sheen that suggests ’80s Tangerine Dream.
From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 3, 2026
She looked pale and a bit pinched, and her forehead shone with a thin sheen of sweat.
From "Night Owls" by A.R. Vishny
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
