shear
pronunciation
How to pronounce shear in British English:
UK [ʃɪə(r)]
How to pronounce shear in American English:
US [ʃɪr]
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- Noun:
- (physics) a deformation of an object in which parallel planes remain parallel but are shifted in a direction parallel to themselves
- (usually plural) large scissors with strong blades
- a large edge tool that cuts sheet metal by passing a blade through it
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- Verb:
- cut with shears
- shear the wool from
- cut or cut through with shears
Word Origin
- shear
- shear: [OE] Shear is the principal English descendant of the Indo-European base *sker- ‘cut’, which has also produced English score, share, shirt, short, and skirt, and probably sharp and shore as well. A variant of the base without the s is responsible for curt and curtail. The immediate source of shear itself is prehistoric Germanic *skeran, which also evolved into German and Dutch scheren, Swedish skära, and Danish skjære.The verb sheer ‘swerve’ [17] probably originated as a variant of shear, but the adjective sheer [16] is an entirely different word. It probably represents a survival of Old English scīr ‘bright, shining’, which came ultimately from the Germanic base *ski-, source also of English shimmer and shine.=> curt, curtail, score, share, sheer, shirt, short, skirt
- shear (v.)
- Old English sceran, scieran (class IV strong verb; past tense scear, past participle scoren) "to cleave, hew, cut with a sharp instrument; cut (hair); shear (sheep)," from Proto-Germanic *sker- "to cut" (cognates: Old Norse and Old Frisian skera, Dutch scheren, German scheren "to shear"), from PIE *(s)ker- (1) "to cut, to scrape, to hack" (cognates: Sanskrit krnati "hurts, wounds, kills," krntati "cuts;" Hittite karsh- "to cut off;" Greek keirein "to cut, shear;" Latin curtus "short;" Lithuanian skiriu "to separate;" Old Irish scaraim "I separate;" Welsh ysgar "to separate," ysgyr "fragment").
- shear (n.)
- "act of clipping," 1610s, also as a unit of measure of the age of a sheep, from shear (v.). Scientific and mechanical sense "type of strain" is from 1850.
Example
- 1. Shaking ketchup invokes one of those elements : shear thinning .
- 2. Its high shear colloid mill with particular intermeshing design offers a quick and efficient asphalt production , having been given the name of " super mill " as praise .
- 3. When laban had gone to shear his sheep , rachel stole her father 's household gods .
- 4. Specifically , conditions encountered by pathogens in certain areas of the gastrointestinal , respiratory and urogenital tracts represent low fluid shear environments that have the potential to alter the outcome of the infectious disease process .
- 5. Fluid shear is the mechanical force exerted by the movement of fluids over cell surfaces and has been found to play an important role in cellular differentiation , development and function .