shim

noun

1. A wedge.
2. A thin piece of material, sometimes tapered, used for alignment or support.

   “Near-synonym: shimstock (uncountable)”

   “The second adjustment [to a door that keeps swinging open] will require the screws to be loosened, and a shim or packing piece pushed behind the hinge to bring it into line.”

3. A small library that transparently intercepts and modifies calls to an API, usually for compatibility purposes.

   “Shims intercept Win32 API calls from legacy applications, as defined by system administrators, and then modify the call before passing the code to Windows for execution.”

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.
7. (derogatory, informal, often)A transsexual person, especially a trans woman; (loosely) a drag queen or transvestite.

   “He — or "Shim" (she/him), as film director John Waters called the actor Divine — was as much a paradoxical as a perverse fellow.”

   “"We call him shim— short for 'she-him.'”

   “Yes Maam, or Sir or just what / how do you address a shim?”

8. (derogatory, informal, often)A person characterised by both male and female traits, or by ambiguous male-female traits; a hermaphrodite.

   “[…] that I was a hermaphrodite, and that things would probably be getting much, much worse as other "parts" of me began to grow manly and I made the full transformation into a "shim."”

9. (abbreviation, alt-of, uncountable)Abbreviation of scanning helium ion microscope.

verb

1. (ambitransitive)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. (transitive)To intercept and modify calls to (an API), usually for compatibility purposes.
4. (ambitransitive)To attack a point-of-sale card reader with a shim.

name

1. A surname.