sheer

Meanings

1. 1
   adv

   directly, straight

   They fell sheer into the water.

2. 2
   verb

   cause to sheer

   You sheered your car around the obstacle.

3. 3
   adj

   Very thin or transparent.

   Her light, sheer dress caught everyone’s attention.

4. 4
   adj

   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.

5. 5
   adj

   Downright; complete; pure.

   I think it is sheer genius to invent such a thing.

6. 6
   adj

   Used to emphasize the amount or degree of something.

   The army's sheer size made it impossible to resist.

7. 7
   adj

   Very steep; almost vertical or perpendicular.

   It was a sheer drop of 180 feet.

8. 8
   adv

   Clean; completely; at once.

   Hector the ashen lance of Ajax smote / With his broad faulchion, at the nether end, / And lopp’d it sheer.

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 Lo…