shear

 
Pronunciation: /ʃɪə/

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 figurative the 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

[mass 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.

Derivatives

shearer

noun

Origin:

Old English sceran (originally in the sense 'cut through with a weapon'), of Germanic origin; related to Dutch and German scheren, from a base meaning 'divide, shear, shave'

The two verbs shear and sheer are sometimes confused: see sheer2 (usage).