English citations of shine

1678 1843
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  • 1678, John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress:
    There are crowns and glory to be given us, and garments that will make us shine like the sun in the firmament of heaven. [2 Tim. 4:8; Rev. 3:4; Matt. 13:43]
  • 1843, Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol:
    At last, however, he began to think — as you or I would have thought at first; for it is always the person not in the predicament who knows what ought to have been done in it, and would unquestionably have done it too — at last, I say, he began to think that the source and secret of this ghostly light might be in the adjoining room, from whence, on further tracing it, it seemed to shine.

noun (some kind of person) edit

  • 1942, Memorandum on Behalf of Defendant Harold J. Elling, page 901:
    I saw a couple of shines down there and tried to talk them into riding into town. They said they didn't own the place, they only worked there, and all that stuff. I kept going until I got to the road and waited at the bridge until I ...
  • 1968, New City, page 19:
    Thompson: Well, there were a lot of [...] racial jokes. [...] One teacher came into class and asked a Negro student how to spell Polisj. So the boy said P-o-l-i-s-h. And then the teacher asked how to spell polish, and the boy answered p-o-l-i-s-h. So the teacher said, 'That's right, and we have a couple of shines right here in this room."
    Marsh : Another joke—it wasn't a joke, it was a racial slur—was directed toward one of the other Negro students.
  • 1971, Patrick John Murphy, Shirley Rousseau Murphy, Carlos Charles, Viking Children's Books
    I picked up a couple of shines , then went on toward the border of the Canal Zone. The burned buildings from the January riots still stood black and empty, and I poked around in them to see if I could find anything of value.