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sheer

sheer is defined in Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1913) with 9 senses. The full text of each entry is reproduced verbatim below.

Definitions

  1. 1.Very thin or transparent; -- applied to fabrics; as, sheer muslin.
  2. 2.Being only what it seems to be; obvious; simple; mere; downright; as, sheer folly; sheer nonsense. "A sheer impossibility." De Quincey. It is not a sheer advantage to have several strings to one's bow. M. Arnold.
  3. 3.Stright up and down; vertical; prpendicular. A sheer precipice of a thousand feet. J. D. Hooker. It was at least Nine roods of sheer ascent. Wordsworth.
  4. 4.Clean; quite; at once. [Obs.] Milton.
  5. 5.To shear. [Obs.] Dryden.
  6. 6.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. To sheer off, to turn or move aside to a distance; to move away. -- To sheer up, to approach obliquely.
  7. 7.(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.
  8. 8.A turn or change in a course. Give the canoe a sheer and get nearer to the shore. Cooper.
  9. 9.pl. Shears See Shear. 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.

Source: Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913 edition (public domain, via GCIDE / Project Gutenberg).

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