| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. |
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| shear |
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| PRONUNCIATION: |  shîr |
| VERB: | Inflected forms: sheared, sheared or shorn ( shôrn, sh rn), shear·ing, shears
| | TRANSITIVE VERB: | 1. To remove (fleece or hair) by cutting or clipping. 2. To remove the hair or fleece from. 3. To cut with or as if with shears: shearing a hedge. 4. To divest or deprive as if by cutting: The prisoners were shorn of their dignity. | | INTRANSITIVE VERB: | 1. To use a cutting tool such as shears. 2. To move or proceed by or as if by cutting: shear through the wheat. 3. Physics To become deformed by forces tending to produce a shearing strain. | | NOUN: | 1a. A pair of scissors. Often used in the plural. b. Any of various implements or machines that cut with a scissorlike action. Often used in the plural. 2. The act, process, or result of shearing. 3. Something cut off by shearing. 4. The act, process, or fact of shearing. Used to indicate a sheep's age: a two-shear ram. 5. also sheers ( shîrz) (used with a sing. or pl. verb) An apparatus used to lift heavy weights, consisting of two or more spars joined at the top and spread at the base, the tackle being suspended from the top. 6. Physics a. An applied force or system of forces that tends to produce a shearing strain. Also called shearing stress, shear stress. b. A shearing strain. | | ETYMOLOGY: | Middle English scheren, from Old English sceran. See sker-1 in Appendix I. N., from Middle English shere, from Old English sc ar. See sker-1 in Appendix I. | | OTHER FORMS: | shear er —NOUN
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| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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