shear

CEFRB2

/ʃˈɪr/

verb

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    verb

    To cut hair or wool from a person or animal.

  2. 02

    verb

    To cut through something with scissors or a sharp tool.

Examples

  • I cannot shear my sheep now. It's still cold.

  • They usually shear sheep in spring.

At a glance

Sits at B2 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
1
Citations
5
Synonyms
2

Deep Dive

verb

Extra meanings

  1. To cut the hair of (a person).

  2. To cut, originally with a sword or other bladed weapon, now usually with shears, or as if using shears.

  3. To remove the fleece from (a sheep, llama, etc.) by clipping.

More examples

In context

  • We hit a nasty shear on approach and had to go around.

  • shear the afro off someone's head

  • shear the llamas

Synonyms

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

Before the weather turns cold, the farmer needs to blank the sheep's thick wool.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

verb

From Middle English sheren, scheren, from Old English sċieran (“to shear; to shave”), from Proto-West Germanic *skeran, from Proto-Germanic *skeraną, from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to cut”). Cognate with West Frisian skarre, Low German, Dutch, and German scheren, Danish skære, Norwegian Bokmål skjære, Norwegian Nynorsk skjera, Swedish skära, Faroese and Icelandic skera, Finnish keritä; and (from Indo-European) with Ancient Greek κείρω (keírō, “to cut off”), Latin caro (“flesh”), Albanian shqerr (“to tear, cut”), harr (“to cut, to mow”), Lithuanian ski̇̀rti (“separate”), Welsh ysgar (“separate”). See also sharp.