shine

To take the shine off, is to surpass in beauty or excellence.

Cousin P--, with his dandy cut trousers, and big whiskers, tried to take the shine off everybody else.--Maj. Jones's Courtship, p. 111.

I'm sorry he didn't bring his pitch-pipe with him, jest to take the shine off them 'are singers.--Maj. Downing's Letters, p. 37.

2) To take a shine to a person, is to take a fancy to him or her.

3) To cut or make a shine, is to make a great display.

All the boys and gals were going to camp-meetin'; so, to make a shine with Sally, I took her a new parasol.--Robb, Squatter Life.

TO SHINE

4) In the Southern States the deer is often hunted by torch-light. The custom is thus described in the 'cracker' dialect of Georgia: "You see the way we does to shine the deer's eyes is this--we holds the pan of fire so, on the left shoulder, and carries the gun at a trail in the right hand. Well, when I wants to look for eyes, I turns round slow, and looks right at the edge of my shadder, what's made by the light behind me in the pan, and if there's a deer in gun-shot of me, his eyes'll shine 'zactly like two balls of fire."--Chronicles of Pineville, p. 169.

He often urged me to accompany him to see how slick he could shine a buck's eyes.--Ibid, p. 162.