Literary notes about shimmer (AI summary)
Literary authors often use “shimmer” as more than a mere description of light—it becomes a subtle color in its own right, a luminous quality that imbues objects and scenes with an otherworldly glow. In some texts the shimmer is distinctly metallic or cool, as when the moon is described with a silver shimmer [1, 2] or when teeth are said to shimmer white [3], while nature is rendered vibrant through hues like the green shimmer on lilacs [4], the bluish shimmer of a haunting seascape [5, 6], or the pale, gray shimmer outlining a lake [7, 8, 9]. Other authors use shimmer to evoke warm tones, as in the gold of a regal adornment [10, 11] or the rich crimson and gold of a sunset [12], and even more unexpected shades appear—a yellow shimmer on a woman's veil [13] and a sea-fire shimmer in a lover’s hair [14]. In each case the term “shimmer” transforms an ordinary color into a dynamic, living quality that breathes life, mystery, and texture into the narrative [15, 16, 17, 18].
- In the golden glory of the sun, in the silver shimmer of the moon, the Jungfrau beckons, the Jungfrau calls!
— from Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 6 Germany, Austria-Hungary and Switzerland, part 2 - There was a silvery shimmer of moonlight upon the lawn, and the great clock in the stables was striking ten.
— from The Doctor's Wife: A Novel by M. E. (Mary Elizabeth) Braddon - His face is wreathed in a broad grin, his teeth shimmer white.
— from Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist by Alexander Berkman - The trees were bursting, the lilacs had a shimmer of green.
— from How the Garden Grew by Maud Maryon - To his eyes the sky looked black as ink, except for a dark-blue unearthly shimmer that now and then flared up from the north, trembled, and vanished.
— from Boyhood in Norway: Stories of Boy-Life in the Land of the Midnight Sun by Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen - He stared at the immobile little body with its bluish shimmer and knew that he was standing in front of the corpse of his own child.
— from The Road to the Open by Arthur Schnitzler - He saw the heat and the gray sea-shimmer left behind him.
— from The Shadow by Arthur Stringer - We are not near enough to see whether the pale shimmer of the young vegetation is due to grass or waving cane-tops.
— from Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. by Various - He did not remark how white, even against the pale shimmer of the lake, was the face that mocked him; and her heartlessness seemed dreadful to him.
— from Starvecrow Farm by Stanley John Weyman - THE SHADOW OF A TO-MORROW Nikko's thin street, with its gigantic isle of cryptomeria, was a shimmer of gold, a flicker of crimson and mandarin-blue.
— from The Kingdom of Slender Swords by Hallie Erminie Rives - pale, with ripe red lips, and brown hair with a shimmer of gold about the temples and the back of the neck.
— from 'Gloria Victis!' A Romance by Ossip Schubin - On the calm spaces of water lay a shimmer of crimson and gold, repeating the noble splendor of the clouds....
— from The Lure of the Camera by Charles S. (Charles Sumner) Olcott - Now, he turned his head towards the quays, and, in the distance, saw the yellow shimmer of a woman's veil.
— from Ancient Manners; Also Known As Aphrodite by Pierre Louÿs - But there is a shimmer of sea-fire in her hair—I love her!
— from Wanderers by Knut Hamsun - In autumn the water meadows are a shimmer of purple and red from the masses of feathery lavender that grow there.
— from Venice by Dorothy Menpes - And there were two lights, the barbaric red of the jewels in her hair, and the black shimmer of her eyes.
— from Riders of the Silences by Max Brand - Her moving outlines dissolved into a misty coloured shimmer of a woman made of flame and shadows, crossing the threshold of his house.
— from Within the Tides: Tales by Joseph Conrad - Her smock-frock, or wrapper, or whatever she called the thing, had a shimmer of green about it.
— from The Rustle of Silk by Cosmo Hamilton
