sheer

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   Used to emphasize how great or pure an amount, degree, or quality is.

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

2. 2
   adj

   So thin that you can almost see through it.

   Her light, sheer dress let the sunlight through.

3. 3
   adj

   Very steep, almost straight up and down.

   It was a sheer drop of nearly two hundred feet to the rocks below.

Common collocations

• sheer beauty Adjective + noun
• sheer force Adjective + noun
• sheer luck Adjective + noun
• sheer pleasure Adjective + noun

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…

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