To cut, clip, or sever anything from with shears or a like instrument; as, to shear sheep; to shear cloth.
To separate or sever with shears or a similar instrument; to cut off; to clip (something) from a surface; as, to shear a fleece.
To reap, as grain.
Fig.: To deprive of property; to fleece.
To produce a change of shape in by a shear. See Shear, n., 4.
A pair of shears; - now always used in the plural, but formerly also in the singular. See Shears.
A shearing; - used in designating the age of sheep.
An action, resulting from applied forces, which tends to cause two contiguous parts of a body to slide relatively to each other in a direction parallel to their plane of contact; - also called shearing stress, and tangential stress.
A strain, or change of shape, of an elastic body, consisting of an extension in one direction, an equal compression in a perpendicular direction, with an unchanged magnitude in the third direction.
To deviate. See Sheer.
To become more or less completely divided, as a body under the action of forces, by the sliding of two contiguous parts relatively to each other in a direction parallel to their plane of contact.
Bright; clear; pure; unmixed.
Very thin or transparent; - applied to fabrics; as, sheer muslin.
Being only what it seems to be; obvious; simple; mere; downright; as, sheer folly; sheer nonsense.
Stright up and down; vertical; prpendicular.
Clean; quite; at once.
To shear.
To decline or deviate from the line of the proper course; to turn aside; to swerve; as, a ship sheers from her course; a horse sheers at a bicycle.
The longitudinal upward curvature of the deck, gunwale, and lines of a vessel, as when viewed from the side.
A turn or change in a course.
Shears See Shear.