Definition of "shiver"

The man that shivered on the brink of sin, / Thus steeled and hardened, ventures boldly in.

1693, Thomas Creech, The thirteenth Satire of Juvenal

Mr. Mason, shivering as some one chanced to open the door, asked for more coal to be put on the fire, which had burnt out its flame, though its mass of cinder still shone hot and red. The footman who brought the coal, in going out, stopped near Mr. Eshton's chair, and said something to him in a low voice, of which I heard only the words, "old woman,"—"quite troublesome."

1847 October 16, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], “CHAPTER XVIII”, in Jane Eyre. An Autobiography. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Smith, Elder, and Co., […]

He was shivering a little, for he had always been used to sleeping in a proper bed, and by this time his coat had worn so thin and threadbare from hugging that it was no longer any protection to him.

1921 June, Margery Williams, “The Velveteen Rabbit: Or How Toys Become Real”, in Harper’s Bazar, volume LVI, number 6 (2504 overall), New York, N.Y.: International Magazine Company

Like most human activities, ballooning has sponsored heroes and hucksters and a good deal in between. For every dedicated scientist patiently recording atmospheric pressure and wind speed while shivering at high altitudes, there is a carnival barker with a bevy of pretty girls willing to dangle from a basket or parachute down to earth.

2013 June 7, David Simpson, “Fantasy of navigation”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 188, number 26, page 36

But they had already discovered that he could be bullied, and they had it their own way; and presently Selwyn lay prone upon the nursery floor, impersonating a ladrone while pleasant shivers chased themselves over Drina, whom he was stalking.

1907 August, Robert W[illiam] Chambers, chapter I, in The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company

a shiver of their own loafThe spelling has been modernized.

1655, Thomas Fuller, edited by James Nichols, The Church History of Britain, […], new edition, volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: […] [James Nichols] for Thomas Tegg and Son, […], published 1837

The man, O Muse, inform, that many a way / Wound with his wisdom to his wished stay; / That wandered wondrous far, when he the town / Of sacred Troy had sack'd and shivered down; […]

1614–1615, Homer, “The First Book of Homer’s Odysseys”, in Geo[rge] Chapman, transl., Homer’s Odysses. […], London: […] Rich[ard] Field [and William Jaggard], for Nathaniell Butter, published 1615; republished in The Odysseys of Homer, […], volume I, London: John Russell Smith, […], 1857, page 1, lines 1–4

But if, in the face of all this, you still declare that whaling has no aesthetically noble associations connected with it, then am I ready to shiver fifty lances with you there, and unhorse you with a split helmet every time.

1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “chapter 24”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley

he found a plaster bust of Napoleon, which stood with several other works of art upon the counter, lying shivered into fragments.

1904, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Six Napoleons, Norton, published 2005, page 1034

A whole series of fault lines radiated away from this Lisbon earthquake, all of them shivering the structures of traditional order.

2010, Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22, Atlantic, published 2011, page 183