shears

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English sheres, plural of shēre,^[2][3] inherited from Old English scēara (“shears, scissors”), plural of scēar.^[3][4][5][6] The OED sees two Old English formations behind it, the plural scērero and the plural of the feminine noun, both from the root of the verb sceran (“to cut, shear”).^[7][6] It is cognate with Old Frisian skēre, Middle Dutch schaer, Dutch schaar, Old High German skār, plural skāri, whence the singular Middle High German schære and German Schere, and Old Norse skæri, a neuter plural.^[7][6][3][8] Köbler reconstructs Proto-Germanic *skērō and *skēriz,^[9] from Proto-Indo-European *sker- (“to cut”),^[3][10][9] the root that Ayto traces in share, score, short and skirt.^[11] In modern English it is the plural of the noun shear in its sense of a cutting tool.^[12][7][13]

Earliest recorded meaning

A pair of scissors or shears: the plural is recorded in Old English, first in the Corpus Glossary,^[7] and Barnhart cites it from Alfred's translation of Gregory's Pastoral Care, before 899.^[8] Bosworth-Toller shows it glossing Latin forfex (“scissors”) and used mostly in the plural, as now.^[5] In Middle English Barnhart finds the plural in Havelok the Dane, about 1300.^[8]

Semantic evolution

The word first meant any pair of scissors, and it still does in Scots and in dialect;^[7][3] in later use it was applied mostly to large scissors and to other cutting tools that work like them.^[7] Johnson (1755) noted that it was seldom used in the singular, and that shears were large and scissors the smaller instrument of the same kind.^[14] The singular shear, for a pair of shears, is recorded from before 1300 and is now rare.^[7] Figurative uses, especially the shears of the Fates, appear from 1600, in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream,^[7] and in the 16th century shears were also used in divination, usually with a sieve.^[7] The proverb there goes but a pair of shears between them, they are cut from the same cloth, was very common from 1578 to 1643,^[7] and chalk is no shears (1640s) was a Scottish proverb on the gap between planning and doing, from the picture of a tailor at work.^[3] From the 1620s the word was also used for a device for raising the masts of ships, now usually spelt sheers,^[3][15] and the 19th century brought machines for cutting metal (1845) and the cutting gear of a cloth-cropping machine (1839).^[7] In Australia and New Zealand sheep just shorn are off the shears (1888).^[7][16]

Timeline

• Old English – a pair of scissors or shears.^[7][8][5]
• before 1300 – the singular shear, a pair of shears.^[7]
• 1382 – misused for a knife or a scythe.^[7]
• 1549 – used in divination, as sieve and shears.^[7]
• 1578 – there goes but a pair of shears between them, they match each other (obsolete by 1643).^[7]
• 1600 – figurative, the shears of the Fates.^[7]
• before 1625 – a device for raising heavy weights and the masts of ships.^[15] Etymonline dates it to the 1620s.^[3]
• 1794 – one blade of a pair of shears.^[7]
• 1832 – a collectors' name for several moths of the genus Hadena.^[15]
• 1845 – machines for cutting metal.^[7]
• 1888 – off the shears, of sheep, just shorn.^[7]

Meanings

Noun

1. A cutting tool like a large pair of scissors, with two blades worked by hand, as for cutting cloth, trimming a hedge or shearing sheep: She trimmed the box hedge with a pair of shears.^[16][12][7]
2. Any of various cutting tools or machines that work by two opposed cutting edges, especially for cutting sheet metal.^[16][12][7]
3. Short for sheerlegs, a lifting device of two or more spars joined at the top.^[16][15]
4. off the shears (Australia, New Zealand): of sheep, just shorn.^[16][7]

Word family

• pinking shears
• pruning shears

Related words

• shear
• share
• scissors
• shard
• score
• short

Usage notes

The word takes a plural verb (the shears are blunt), and a pair of shears is used where a number or an article is needed;^[7] a construction with a singular verb is recorded from before 1657.^[7] Etymonline notes that the OED labels the sense "scissors" Scottish and dialectal.^[3] In American gambling slang shears were playing cards trimmed for cheating (1961).^[17]

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 Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
6. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ 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 z Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
9. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Germanisches Wörterbuch, 5th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
10. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
11. ^ 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 Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
13. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
14. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
15. ^ a b c d Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
16. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
17. ^ Dalzell, Tom; Victor, Terry, eds. (2013), The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 2nd ed., London: Routledge