Sheer
Sheer , adjective
[Old English shere, skere, pure, bright, Icelandic sk{not transcribed}rr; akin to skīrr, Anglo-Saxon scīr, Old Saxon skīri, Middle High German schīr, German schier, Danish sk{not transcribed}r, Swedish skar, Gothic skeirs clear, and English shine. r157. See Shine, v. i.]
1.
Bright; clear; pure; unmixed.
Sheer ale.
Thou sheer, immaculate, and silver fountain.
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.
It is not a sheer advantage to have several strings to one's bow.
4.
Stright up and down; vertical; prpendicular.
A sheer precipice of a thousand feet.
It was at least
Nine roods of sheer ascent.
Sheer , adverb
Clean; quite; at once. [Obsolete] — Milton
Sheer , transitive verb
[See Shear.]
To shear. [Obsolete] — Dryden
Sheer , intransitive verb
[Dutch sheren to shear, cut, withdraw, warp. See Shear.]
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.
Collocations (2)
To sheer off , to turn or move aside to a distance; to move away.
To sheer up , to approach obliquely.
Sheer , noun
1.
(a) (Nautical) The longitudinal upward curvature of the deck, gunwale, and lines of a vessel, as when viewed from the side.
(b)
(Nautical) 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.
3.
Shears See Shear.
Collocations (7)
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 (Nautical) , 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 (Nautical) , to deviate from sheer, and risk fouling the anchor.