shim

Meanings

1. A wedge.
2. A thin piece of material, sometimes tapered, used for alignment or support.
3. A small library that transparently intercepts and modifies calls to an API, usually for compatibility purposes.
4. A kind of shallowly cutting plow used in tillage to break the ground and clear it of weeds.
5. A small metal device used to pick open a lock.
6. A thin device inserted into a card reader by a criminal to facilitate fraud.

1. To fit one or more shims to a piece of machinery or other assembly; to adjust (something) by using shims.
2. To adjust the homogeneity of a magnetic field (after the mechanical devices once used for the purpose).
3. To intercept and modify calls to (an API), usually for compatibility purposes.
4. To attack a point-of-sale card reader with a shim.

1. A transsexual person, especially a trans woman; (loosely) a drag queen or transvestite.
2. A person characterised by both male and female traits, or by ambiguous male-female traits; a hermaphrodite.

1. Abbreviation of scanning helium ion microscope.

1. A surname.

Etymology

Unknown; from Kent. 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.