quivering

[ kwiv-uh-ring ]

adjective

1. trembling or shaking with a slight, rapid motion, or seeming to tremble or shake:

   The sun climbed higher and movement ceased: over the whole summit, figures lay still in the quivering heat.

   Forty hertz is really fast, like the quivering light from a faulty fluorescent bulb.

noun

1. an act or instance of shaking with a slight but rapid motion:

   The quivering in the heart upsets the normal rhythm between the atria and the lower parts of the heart, the ventricles.

Other Words From

• quiv·er·ing·ly adverb
• un·quiv·er·ing adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of quivering¹

First recorded in 1530–40; quiver ¹( def ) + -ing ²( def ) for the adjective; quiver ¹( def ) + -ing ¹( def ) for the noun

Example Sentences

For some of the men of America’s founding generation, the world of ancient Greece and Rome was a ready quiver, a source of stories and vocabularies that were of use in the present.

From Washington Post

The soft cry from her quivering lips meets the rhythmic beat of our rattles: the battle cry of her living nightmare.

From The Daily Beast

Ten feet away, Sher scrunched into a quivering ball and began to cry.

From The Daily Beast

The emphasis was his: a high quivering shout, a forefinger stabbing upward.

From The Daily Beast

I came home quivering with excitement about my new friends, and about art, which I suddenly thought of as "Art."

From The Daily Beast

The woman who took no nonsense from a cabinet of quivering, jelly-kneed men, some of whom loved her, some of whom loathed her.

From The Daily Beast

Her white face looked ethereal in the moonlight, and her bloodless lips were quivering with returning life.

From Project Gutenberg

At the word of command, the dog crouched down, his whole body quivering with excitement.

From Project Gutenberg

The eyebrows were low and thick, the upper lip was sensitive, quivering sometimes as she talked, but the lower was firm and full.

From Project Gutenberg

The clear and radiant sky was drowned in a quivering radiance of gold, that was like a thing alive and sensitively palpitating.

From Project Gutenberg

"You are very good," she said, her voice quivering with feeling and real gratitude, and as he was departing she called after him.

From Project Gutenberg

Related Words

• shaking
• shivering
• trembling