shim

noun8

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

   • 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. — 2016
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. — 2010
4. •
   A small metal device used to pick open a lock.
5. •
   A thin device inserted into a card reader by a criminal to facilitate fraud.
6. •
   (informal, offensive) 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. — 1998
7. •
   (informal, offensive) 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." — 2009
8. •
   A kind of shallowly cutting plow used in tillage to break the ground and clear it of weeds.

verb4

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.

noun1

1. •
   Abbreviation of scanning helium ion microscope.