shear

verb (past participle shorn /ʃɔːn/ or sheared)

• 1 [with object] cut the wool off (a sheep or other animal): Paul has never sheared a sheep before (as noun shearing)demonstrations of sheep shearing
• cut off (something such as hair, wool, or grass), with scissors or shears:I’ll shear off all that fleece
• (be shorn of) have something cut off:they were shorn of their hair figurativethe richest man in the US was shorn of nearly $2 billion

• 2break off or cause to break off, owing to a structural strain: [no object]:the gear sheared and jammed in the rear wheel [with object]:the left wing had been almost completely sheared off

noun

• a strain produced by pressure in the structure of a substance, when its layers are laterally shifted in relation to each other: the water from the upper source is emitted at the same speed as the main flow; there is thus no shear [as modifier]:aluminium is not very resilient to shear forcesSee also wind shear.