SHEERING

Verb

sheering

present participle of sheer

Anagrams

• greenish, rehinges

Source: Wiktionary


SHEER

Sheer, a. Etym: [OE. shere, skere, pure, bright, Icel. sk; akin to skirr, AS. scir, OS. skiri, MHG. schir, G. schier, Dan. sk, Sw. skär, Goth. skeirs clear, and E. shine. sq. root157. See Shine, v. i.]

1. Bright; clear; pure; unmixed. "Sheer ale." Shak. Thou sheer, immaculate, and silver fountain. Shak.

2. Very thin or transparent; -- applied to fabrics; as, sheer muslin.

3. Being only what it seems to be; obvious; simple; mere; downright; as, sheer folly; sheer nonsense. "A sheer impossibility." De Quincey. It is not a sheer advantage to have several strings to one's bow. M. Arnold.

4. Stright up and down; vertical; prpendicular. A sheer precipice of a thousand feet. J. D. Hooker. It was at least Nine roods of sheer ascent. Wordsworth.

Sheer, adv.

Definition: Clean; quite; at once. [Obs.] Milton.

Sheer, v. t. Etym: [See Shear.]

Definition: To shear. [Obs.] Dryden.

Sheer, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Sheered; p. pr. & vb. n. Sheering.] Etym: [D. sheren to shear, cut, withdraw, warp. See Shear.]

Definition: 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. To sheer off, to turn or move aside to a distance; to move away.

– To sheer up, to approach obliquely.

Sheer, n.

1. (Naut.) (a) The longitudinal upward curvature of the deck, gunwale, and lines of a vessel, as when viewed from the side. (b) The position of a vessel riding at single anchor and swinging clear of it.

2. A turn or change in a course. Give the canoe a sheer and get nearer to the shore. Cooper.

3. pl.

Definition: Shears See Shear. Sheer batten (Shipbuilding), a long strip of wood to guide the carpenters in following the sheer plan.

– Sheer boom, a boom slanting across a stream to direct floating logs to one side.

– Sheer hulk. See Shear hulk, under Hulk.

– Sheer plan, or Sheer draught (Shipbuilding), a projection of the lines of a vessel on a vertical longitudinal plane passing through the middle line of the vessel.

– Sheer pole (Naut.), an iron rod lashed to the shrouds just above the dead-eyes and parallel to the ratlines.

– Sheer strake (Shipbuilding), the strake under the gunwale on the top side. Totten.

– To break sheer (Naut.), to deviate from sheer, and risk fouling the anchor.

Source: Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary 1913 Edition



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Word of the Day

1 February 2025

GRIP

(noun) an intellectual hold or understanding; “a good grip on French history”; “they kept a firm grip on the two top priorities”; “he was in the grip of a powerful emotion”; “a terrible power had her in its grasp”


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Coffee Trivia

The earliest credible evidence of coffee-drinking as the modern beverage appeared in modern-day Yemen. In the middle of the 15th century in Sufi shrines where coffee seeds were first roasted and brewed for drinking. The Yemenis procured the coffee beans from the Ethiopian Highlands.

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