Etymologically
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shear

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Pronunciation

  • UK: /ʃɪə/[1]
  • US: /ʃɪɚ/[1]

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

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