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sheer

adj
/ʃɪə̯/UK/ʃɪː//ʃɪɚ/US

Etymology

From Middle English shere, scheere, schere, skere, from Old English sċǣre (“pure, sheer; shining, clear”), from Proto-Germanic *skairiz; supplanted the semantically close shire (dialectal), from Middle English schyre, schire, shire, shir, from Old English sċīr (“clear, bright; brilliant, gleaming, shining, splendid, resplendent; pure”), beside which existed Middle English skyr, from Old Norse skírr (“pure, bright, clear”), both from Proto-Germanic *skīriz (“pure, sheer”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ḱeh₁y- (“luster, gloss, shadow”). Cognate with Danish skær, German schier (“sheer”), German Low German schier (“sheer, pure, unadulterated”; “completely, almost”), Dutch schier (“almost”), Gothic 𐍃𐌺𐌴𐌹𐍂𐍃 (skeirs, “clear, lucid”). Outside Germanic, cognate to Albanian hir (“grace, beauty; goodwill”).

  1. derived from *(s)ḱeh₁y-✻ — “luster, gloss, shadow”
  2. inherited from *skīriz✻ — “pure, sheer”
  3. derived from skírr — “pure, bright, clear”
  4. inherited from skyr
  5. inherited from sċīr — “clear, bright; brilliant, gleaming, shining, splendid, resplendent; pure”
  6. inherited from schyre
  7. inherited from *skairiz✻
  8. inherited from sċǣre — “pure, sheer; shining, clear”
  9. inherited from shere

Definitions

  1. Very thin or transparent.

    • Her light, sheer dress caught everyone’s attention.
    • “She sheathed her legs in the sheerest of the nylons that her father had brought back from the Continent, and slipped her feet into the toeless, high-heeled shoes of black suède.”
    • She was cunningly dressed in a black, sheer gown with gold ornaments showing her figure to perfection.

  2. Pure in composition

    Pure in composition; unmixed; unadulterated.

    • If she say I am not fourteen pence on the score for sheer ale, score me up for the lying’st knave in Christendom.
    • Thou sheer, immaculate and silver fountain, / From when this stream through muddy passages / Hath held his current and defiled himself!

  3. Downright

    Downright; complete; pure.

    • I think it is sheer genius to invent such a thing.
    • This poem is sheer nonsense.
  4. ›+ 9 more definitions

    1. Used to emphasize the amount or degree of something.

      • The army's sheer size made it impossible to resist.
      • Dr. Frank Hoffman, a gynecologist and founder of the program, says he was appalled by the sheer numbers of cases of early-stage breast cancer that were being missed, not just in Germany but around the world.

    2. Very steep

      Very steep; almost vertical or perpendicular.

      • It was a sheer drop of 180 feet.

    3. Clean

      Clean; completely; at once.

      • Hector the ashen lance of Ajax smote / With his broad faulchion, at the nether end, / And lopp’d it sheer.
      • Swift into the dark stream at once he fell, / As the red star at once falls swift and sheer / From sky to sea
      • Descending , and in half cut sheer

    4. A sheer curtain or fabric.

      • Use sheers to maximize natural light.
      • Lightweight, tightly woven silkies, sheers, lingerie

    5. The curve of the main deck or gunwale from bow to stern.

    6. An abrupt swerve from the course of a ship.

    7. To swerve from a course.

      • I sheered her well inshore—the water being deepest near the bank, as the sounding–pole informed me.

    8. Obsolete spelling of shear.

      • So thick, our navy scarce could sheer their way

    9. A surname.

The neighborhood

Derived

semisheer, sheerish, sheerly, sheerness, sheer-to-waist, supersheer, ultrasheer, break sheer, plank-sheer, sheer hulk

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for sheer. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA