shear

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English sheren,^[2][3][4] inherited from Old English sceran, also scieran,^[3][5][6][7] a strong verb with the past participle scoren,^[3][6] from Proto-Germanic *skeraną (“to cut”).^[8][9][3] It is cognate with Old Frisian skera, Dutch scheren, Old High German sceran (“to shave, shear, cut”), German scheren, Old Norse skera (“to cut; to slaughter”), Swedish skära and Danish skære.^{[8][10][5][11]} Outside Germanic it goes back to Proto-Indo-European *sker- (“to cut”),^{[3][4][11][5]} with cognates such as Ancient Greek κείρω (keírō, “to cut, shear”), Lithuanian skìrti (“to separate, cut”) and Old Irish scaraid (“to divide, separate”);^[9][8][10] Merriam-Webster adds Latin curtus (“shortened”).^[12] The noun for the cutting tool, usually plural shears, is inherited from Middle English shere, inherited from Old English scēar, plural scēara,^[12][4][13] which the OED takes together with the Old English plural scērero;^[10] it is cognate with Old High German skār (“blade”), Old Norse skæri (“pair of shears”) and Schere.^[12][13][10] The noun for a shearing, and for the scientific strain, is formed from the verb.^[3][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

To cut with a sharp weapon or instrument: in Old English, about 725 in Beowulf according to Barnhart, where a sword cuts the boar figure above a helmet.^[5][6][10] The Old English verb also meant to shave the beard, cut the hair and shear sheep.^[3][6]

Semantic evolution

The Oxford Dictionary of English notes that the Old English verb first meant to cut through with a weapon,^[14] and the OED marks the general sense "to cut" as now archaic;^[10] Weekley remarks that cut replaced it except in special senses.^[15] Middle English kept many cutting senses that have died out: to circumcise, to carve meat at table (about 1330 to 1489), to mince (about 1430 to 1725), and in Scots to cut for the stone.^[10] What survived is the clipping of hair and above all of a sheep's fleece, the sense Johnson (1755) put first, illustrated from Shakespeare's "e're I shall sheer the fleece".^[16][3] The figurative shorn of, deprived of, goes back to the story of Samson,^[15] and the proverb about God tempering the wind to the shorn lamb was apparently adapted by Sterne from the French à brebis tondue Dieu mesure le vent.^[15] The noun shear was used from 1614 for the number of shearings a sheep had undergone, giving its age.^[10][3] From the 19th century the word entered engineering and science: to cut metal with shears (1837), and, as a noun, a strain in which layers of a body slide parallel to each other (1850), in geometry (1885) and in geology (1888).^[10][3] In slang, from the 17th century, to shear someone was to fleece or trick them.^[17]

Timeline

• c. 725 – Old English sceran, to cut, in Beowulf.^[5]
• Old English – shears, the cutting tool.^[10]
• c. 1250 – Middle English sheren, to cut with shears.^[5]
• c. 1330 – to cut off a part.^[10]
• 1600 – the shears of the Fates, in A Midsummer Night's Dream.^[10]
• 1614 – noun, the age of a sheep counted by its shearings.^[10][3]
• c. 1664 – slang, to fleece, trick.^[17]
• 1837 – to cut metal with shears.^[10]
• 1850 – noun, a transverse strain in mechanics.^[10][3]
• 1888 – in geology, transverse compression of rock.^[10]

Meanings

Verb

1. To cut the wool or hair from, especially to remove the fleece of a sheep: They sheared two hundred ewes before noon.^[18][12][10]
2. To cut or clip with shears or another sharp tool; to cut off: She sheared the dead stems back to the ground.^[18][12][10]
3. To strip or deprive, usually in the passive with of: a party shorn of its leaders.^[12][15]
4. (engineering) To break or deform, or cause to break or deform, under a force acting sideways across a part: The bolt sheared under the load.^[18][12]
5. (archaic) To cut through or cleave with a weapon.^[10][12]

Noun

1. A cutting tool like large scissors, usually in the plural shears: a pair of garden shears.^[12][18][10]
2. A machine for cutting metal.^[12][10]
3. The act or result of shearing; a shearing of sheep, used also in giving a sheep's age.^[12][10]
4. (physics) A deformation in which parallel layers of a body slide past each other, or the force causing it.^[18][12][10]

Word family

• shearer
• shearless
• shearling
• shearwater
• shear modulus
• shear zone
• alligator shear
• shears
• shorn

Related words

• share
• shard
• score
• shore
• short
• shirt
• skirt
• sharp
• curt
• curtail

Usage notes

The usual past participle is shorn or sheared; the past tense shore is archaic except in Australia and New Zealand.^[13][18] A noun shear for the bed of a lathe, recorded from 1812, is of uncertain origin and not clearly the same word.^[10][13] The verb sheer, to swerve, probably began as a variant of shear, but the adjective sheer has a separate source, probably Old English scīr (“bright, shining”).^[11]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
6. ^ a b c d Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
7. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b c Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
9. ^ a b Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
10. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b c Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
12. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
13. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
15. ^ a b c d Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
16. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
17. ^ a b Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
18. ^ a b c d e f Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins