SHEARING • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Shearing

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/ʃˈɪrɪŋ/ Listen

verb

Shear v. t. (past sheared or shore;past part. sheared or shorn; pres. part. shearing)

1.

To cut, clip, or sever anything from with shears or a like instrument; as, to shear sheep; to shear cloth. Note: It is especially applied to the cutting of wool from sheep or their skins, and the nap from cloth.

2.

To separate or sever with shears or a similar instrument; to cut off; to clip (something) from a surface; as, to shear a fleece. "Before the golden tresses... were shorn away."

3.

To reap, as grain. (Scot.)

4.

Fig.: To deprive of property; to fleece.

5.

(Mech.) To produce a change of shape in by a shear. See Shear, n., 4.

Shear v. i.

1.

To deviate. See Sheer.

2.

(Engin.) To become more or less completely divided, as a body under the action of forces, by the sliding of two contiguous parts relatively to each other in a direction parallel to their plane of contact.

noun

Shearing n.

1.

The act or operation of clipping with shears or a shearing machine, as the wool from sheep, or the nap from cloth.

2.

The product of the act or operation of clipping with shears or a shearing machine; as, the whole shearing of a flock; the shearings from cloth.

3.

Same as Shearling.

4.

The act or operation of reaping. (Scot.)

5.

The act or operation of dividing with shears; as, the shearing of metal plates.

6.

The process of preparing shear steel; tilting.

7.

(Mining) The process of making a vertical side cutting in working into a face of coal.

Shearing machine.

(a)

A machine with blades, or rotary disks, for dividing plates or bars of metal.

(b)

A machine for shearing cloth.

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Etymology of 'Shearing'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Shearing" Quotes from Famous Books

... he was always too anxious about his sheep when overtaken by a fog to think of his own danger. Then the wages were good, and the same all the year round, with the chance of making some extra money in the shearing season, and so much a head on each lamb that he reared; and to all intents and purposes he was his own master, for the farmer to whom the sheep belonged entrusted the management of the flock entirely ...

— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various

... umbrellaed cart was vanishing up the hill, and the sunbonnet was floating down the road. The sky was an unmitigated blue, save for a few masses of cloud, like piles of new fleece on a shearing-floor. Green woods, gray road, blue sky, pale clouds, all were steeped in heat and silence so intense it seemed that something ...

— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... efforts he never regained consciousness and died in forty-five minutes. Postmortem examination revealed everything normal, and death must have been caused by syncope following violent pain. Watkins cites an instance occurring in South Africa. A native shearing sheep for a farmer provoked his master's ire by calling him by some nickname. While the man was in a squatting posture the farmer struck him in the epigastrium. He followed this up by a kick in the side and a blow on the ...

— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... in Missouri. They were easily disciplined save upon a single point, and on this they were very obstinate. Many of the negroes in Missouri, as in other parts of the South, wear their hair, or wool, in little knots or braids. They refused to submit to a close shearing, and threatened to return to their masters rather than comply with the regulation. Some actually left the camp and went home. The officers finally carried their point by inducing some free negroes in Leavenworth, ...

— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox

... me contriving in my little gardens, Christy Mahon, you'll swear the Lord God formed me to be living lone, and that there isn't my match in Mayo for thatching, or mowing, or shearing a sheep. ...

— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge

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