Sheer \Sheer\, adv.
Clean; quite; at once. [Obs.] --Milton.
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The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
Sheer \Sheer\, v. t. [See Shear.]
To shear. [Obs.] --Dryden.
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The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
Sheer \Sheer\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Sheered; p. pr. & vb. n.
Sheering.] [D. sheren to shear, cut, withdraw, warp. See
Shear.]
To decline or deviate from the line of the proper course; to
turn aside; to swerve; as, a ship sheers from her course; a
horse sheers at a bicycle.
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To sheer off, to turn or move aside to a distance; to move
away.
To sheer up, to approach obliquely.
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The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
Sheer \Sheer\, a. [OE. shere, skere, pure, bright, Icel. sk?rr;
akin to sk[imac]rr, AS. sc[imac]r, OS. sk[imac]ri, MHG.
sch[imac]r, G. schier, Dan. sk?r, Sw. sk[aum]r, Goth. skeirs
clear, and E. shine. [root]157. See Shine, v. i.]
1. Bright; clear; pure; unmixed. "Sheer ale." --Shak.
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Thou sheer, immaculate, and silver fountain. --Shak.
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2. Very thin or transparent; -- applied to fabrics; as, sheer
muslin.
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3. Being only what it seems to be; obvious; simple; mere;
downright; as, sheer folly; sheer nonsense. "A sheer
impossibility." --De Quincey.
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It is not a sheer advantage to have several strings
to one's bow. --M. Arnold.
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4. Stright up and down; vertical; prpendicular.
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A sheer precipice of a thousand feet. --J. D.
Hooker.
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It was at least
Nine roods of sheer ascent. --Wordsworth.
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The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
Sheer \Sheer\, n.
1. (Naut.)
(a) The longitudinal upward curvature of the deck,
gunwale, and lines of a vessel, as when viewed from
the side.
(b) The position of a vessel riding at single anchor and
swinging clear of it.
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2. A turn or change in a course.
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Give the canoe a sheer and get nearer to the shore.
--Cooper.
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3. pl. Shears See Shear.
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Sheer batten (Shipbuilding), a long strip of wood to guide
the carpenters in following the sheer plan.
Sheer boom, a boom slanting across a stream to direct
floating logs to one side.
Sheer hulk. See Shear hulk, under Hulk.
Sheer plan, or Sheer draught (Shipbuilding), a projection
of the lines of a vessel on a vertical longitudinal plane
passing through the middle line of the vessel.
Sheer pole (Naut.), an iron rod lashed to the shrouds just
above the dead-eyes and parallel to the ratlines.
Sheer strake (Shipbuilding), the strake under the gunwale
on the top side. --Totten.
To break sheer (Naut.), to deviate from sheer, and risk
fouling the anchor.
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The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
sheer
adj 1: complete and without restriction or qualification; sometimes
used informally as intensifiers; "absolute freedom";
"an absolute dimwit"; "a downright lie"; "out-and-out
mayhem"; "an out-and-out lie"; "a rank outsider";
"many right-down vices"; "got the job through sheer
persistence"; "sheer stupidity" [syn: absolute, downright,
out-and-out(a), rank(a), right-down, sheer(a)]
2: not mixed with extraneous elements; "plain water"; "sheer
wine"; "not an unmixed blessing" [syn: plain, unmingled,
unmixed]
3: very steep; having a prominent and almost vertical front; "a
bluff headland"; "where the bold chalk cliffs of England
rise"; "a sheer descent of rock" [syn: bluff, bold]
4: so thin as to transmit light; "a hat with a diaphanous
veil"; "filmy wings of a moth"; "gauzy clouds of dandelion
down"; "gossamer cobwebs"; "sheer silk stockings";
"transparent chiffon"; "vaporous silks" [syn: diaphanous,
filmy, gauzy, gossamer, see-through, transparent,
vaporous, cobwebby]
adv 1: straight up or down without a break [syn: perpendicularly]
2: directly; "he fell sheer into the water"
v 1: turn sharply; change direction abruptly; "The car cut to the
left at the intersection"; "The motorbike veered to the
right" [syn: swerve, curve, trend, veer, slue,
slew, cut]
2: cause to sheer; "She sheered her car around the obstacle"
WordNet (r) 2.0
263 Moby Thesaurus words for "sheer":
aberrancy, aberration, about ship, abrupt, absolute, absolutely,
airy, all-embracing, all-encompassing, all-out, all-pervading,
angle, angle off, aplomb, arduous, arrant, at right angles, avert,
back and fill, bare, bear away, bear off, bear to starboard, beat,
beat about, bend, bent, bias, blasted, blessed, bluff, bold, born,
box off, branch off, branching off, break, breakneck, bring about,
bring round, broad-based, cant, cant round, cast, cast about,
change course, change the bearing, change the heading, chiffon,
circuitousness, clarified, clean, clear, clear as crystal,
come about, complete, comprehensive, confounded, congenital,
consummate, corner, crook, crystal, crystal-clear, crystalline,
curve, declination, deep-dyed, deflect, depart from, departure,
detour, deviance, deviancy, deviate, deviation, deviousness,
diaphane, diaphanous, digress, digression, dip, discursion,
distilled, divagate, divagation, divaricate, divarication, diverge,
divergence, diversion, divert, dogleg, double, double a point,
downright, drift, drifting, dyed-in-the-wool, egregious, errantry,
excursion, excursus, exhaustive, exorbitation, fetch about, filmy,
flimsy, gauzy, go about, gossamer, gossamery, gross, gybe, hairpin,
headlong, heave round, heel, indirection, infernal, intensive,
irretrievably, irrevocably, jibe, jibe all standing,
light-pervious, limpid, lucid, lurch, mere, miss stays, naked,
neat, nonopaque, oblique, obliquity, omnibus, omnipresent,
orthodiagonal, orthogonal, out-and-out, outright, peekaboo,
pellucid, pererration, perfect, perfectly, perpendicular,
perpendicularly, pervasive, pivot, plain, plumb, plunging, ply,
precipitate, precipitous, pure, purified, put about, put back,
quite, radical, rambling, rank, rapid, rectified, regular,
revealing, right, right-angle, right-angled, right-angular,
round a point, see-through, sharp, sheerly, shift, shifting,
shifting course, shifting path, sideling, simple, skew, slant,
slew, slue, square, stark, steep, stickle, straight, straight-up,
straight-up-and-down, straying, sway, sweep, sweeping, swerve,
swerving, swing round, swing the stern, swinging, tack, thin,
thorough, thoroughgoing, through-and-through, throw about, total,
translucent, transparent, transpicuous, trend, turn, turn aside,
turn back, turning, twist, ubiquitous, unadorned, unadulterated,
unalloyed, unblended, unclouded, uncombined, uncompounded,
unconditional, uncorrupted, undiluted, unenhanced, unfortified,
universal, unleavened, unmingled, unmitigated, unmixed,
unqualified, unrelievedly, unreserved, unrestricted,
unsophisticated, untinged, up and down, up-and-down, utter,
variation, vary, veer, veritable, vertical, volte-face, wandering,
warp, wear, wear ship, wheel, whip, whirl, wholesale, wind, yaw,
zigzag
Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0
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