sheer
Very thin or transparent.
Adjective 4 meanings
Very thin or transparent.
“Her light, sheer dress caught everyone’s attention.”
Downright; complete; pure.
“I think it is sheer genius to invent such a thing.”
Used to emphasize the amount or degree of something.
“The army's sheer size made it impossible to resist.”
Very steep; almost vertical or perpendicular.
“It was a sheer drop of 180 feet.”
Noun 3 meanings
A sheer curtain or fabric.
“Use sheers to maximize natural light.”
The curve of the main deck or gunwale from bow to stern.
An abrupt swerve from the course of a ship.
Verb 1 meaning
To swerve from a course.
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”).
Similar and opposite words
SHEER at a glance
SHEER has 5 letters and scores 8 points in Scrabble (S 1 + H 4 + E 1 + E 1 + R 1) and 7 in Words With Friends, before board bonuses. It ranks #6,951 by how often it appears in everyday English. It is valid in ENABLE, NWL2023, Collins/SOWPODS.
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