shear

(shîr)

v. sheared, sheared or shorn (shôrn), shear·ing, shears

v.tr.

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.

v.intr.

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 shear force.

1. often shears

a. A pair of scissors.

b. Any of various implements or machines that cut with a scissorlike action.

2. The act, process, or result of shearing, especially when used to indicate a sheep's age: a two-shear ram.

3. Something cut off by shearing.

4. 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.

5. Physics

a. See shear force.

b. See shear strain.

c. See shear stress.

[Middle English scheren, from Old English sceran; see sker- in Indo-European roots. N., from Middle English shere, from Old English scēar; see sker- in Indo-European roots.]

shear′er n.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

shears

(ʃɪəz)

pl n

1. (Tools)

a. large scissors, as for cutting cloth, jointing poultry, etc

b. a large scissor-like and usually hand-held cutting tool with flat blades, as for cutting hedges

2. (Tools) any of various analogous cutting or clipping implements or machines

3. (Mechanical Engineering) short for sheerlegs

4. (Agriculture) off the shears informal Austral (of a sheep) newly shorn

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun

shears - large scissors with strong blades

clipper - shears for cutting grass or shrubbery (often used in the plural)

pruning shears - shears with strong blades used for light pruning of woody plants

pair of scissors, scissors - an edge tool having two crossed pivoting blades

snips, tinsnips - (plural) hand shears for cutting sheet metal

thinning shears - shears with one serrate blade; used for thinning hair

plural, plural form - the form of a word that is used to denote more than one

Translations

مِقَص للجَز

strojní nůžky

saks

cisailles

nyesőolló

klippur

cesoie

blikksaks

kırkma makası

剪床

shears

[ʃɪəz] NPL (for sheep) → tijeras fpl de esquilar; (for hedges) → tijeras fpl de podar; (for metals) → cizalla fsing

Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

shears

[ˈʃɪə^rz] npl (also garden shears) → cisaille f, cisailles fpl

Collins English/French Electronic Resource. © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

shears

pl → (große) Schere; (for hedges) → Heckenschere f; (for metal) → Metallschere f

Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007

shears

[ʃɪəz] npl (for gardening) → cesoie fpl; (for dressmaking) → forbici fpl; (for sheep) → forbici fpl da tosatore

Collins Italian Dictionary 1st Edition © HarperCollins Publishers 1995

shear

(ʃiə) – past tense sheared: past participles sheared ~shorn (ʃoːn) – verb

1. to clip or cut wool from (a sheep).

2. (past tense shorn. often with off) to cut (hair) off: All her curls have been shorn off.

3. (past tense shorn. especially with of) to cut hair from (someone): He has been shorn (of all his curls).

4. to cut or (cause to) break. A piece of the steel girder sheared off.

shears noun plural

a cutting-tool with two blades, like a large pair of scissors. a pair of shears.

shears

n., pl. tijeras.

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

At shearing time, wishing to take his fleece and to avoid expense, she sheared him herself, but used the shears so unskillfully that with the fleece she sheared the flesh.

View in context

The maintopmast was over thirty feet in length, the foretopmast nearly thirty, and it was of these that I intended making the shears. It was puzzling work.

In less than an hour I had the maintopmast on deck and was constructing the shears. Lashing the two topmasts together, and making allowance for their unequal length, at the point of intersection I attached the double block of the main throat- halyards.

View in context

As she drew nigh, all eyes were fixed upon her broad beams, called shears, which, in some whaling-ships, cross the quarter-deck at the height of eight or nine feet; serving to carry the spare, unrigged, or disabled boats.

View in context

They are bound to think you are on your own, and their shears are all sharpened for the trimming of newcomers like you."

And on the eighteenth, when that dividend was declared, he chuckled at the confusion that would inevitably descend upon the men with the sharpened shears waiting to trim him--him, Burning Daylight.

View in context

But what does it matter to you if my hair lacks the shears? If you will forgive me what may seem to you a piece of rudeness, I declare that the poor man is ashamed of such things with the sensitiveness of a young girl.

View in context

So Oz brought a pair of tinsmith's shears and cut a small, square hole in the left side of the Tin Woodman's breast.

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Quick as lightning, Mr Pancks, who, for some moments, had had his right hand in his coat pocket, whipped out a pair of shears, swooped upon the Patriarch behind, and snipped off short the sacred locks that flowed upon his shoulders.

After staring at this phantom in return, in silent awe, Mr Pancks threw down his shears, and fled for a place of hiding, where he might lie sheltered from the consequences of his crime.

View in context

"Oh, niece of mine," replied Don Quixote, "how much astray art thou in thy reckoning: ere they shear me I shall have plucked away and stripped off the beards of all who dare to touch only the tip of a hair of mine."

View in context

It sheared off heads so many, that it, and the ground it most polluted, were a rotten red.

View in context