sheer
Part of speech: adj
noun
Morphological type: simple
Topics: business
manufacturing
textiles
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 Low German schier (“sheer, pure, unadulterated”; “completely, almost”), Dutch schier (“almost”), Gothic 𐍃𐌺𐌴𐌹𐍂𐍃 (skeirs, “clear, lucid”). Outside Germanic, cognate to Albanian hir (“grace, beauty; goodwill”).
Inflected forms:
form: sheerer
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: more sheer
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: sheerest
pos: adj
tags: superlative
form: most sheer
pos: adj
tags: superlative
form: sheers
pos: noun
tags: plural
Senses:
gloss: Very thin or transparent.
pos: adj
examples: Her light, sheer dress caught everyone’s attention.
“She sheathed her legs in the sheerest of the nylons that her father had brought back from the Continent, and slipped her feet into the toeless, high-heeled shoes of black suède.”
She was cunningly dressed in a black, sheer gown with gold ornaments showing her figure to perfection.
gloss: Pure in composition; unmixed; unadulterated.
pos: adj
tags: obsolete
examples: If she say I am not fourteen pence on the score for sheer ale, score me up for the lying’st knave in Christendom.
Thou sheer, immaculate and silver fountain, / From when this stream through muddy passages / Hath held his current and defiled himself!
gloss: Downright; complete; pure.
pos: adj
tags: broadly
examples: I think it is sheer genius to invent such a thing.
This poem is sheer nonsense.
That the young Mr. Churchills liked—but they did not like him coming round of an evening and drinking weak whisky-and-water while he held forth on railway debentures and corporation loans. Mr. Barrett, however, by fawning and flattery, seemed to be able to make not only Mrs. Churchill but everyone else do what he desired. And if the arts of humbleness failed him, he overcame you by sheer impudence.
There is no organized movement of gays or feminists that would support individuals and that would make coming out, at the workplace, anything less than a shear ^([sic]) act of suicide.
Cycling's complex etiquette contains an unwritten rule that riders in contention for a race win should not be penalised for sheer misfortune.
gloss: Used to emphasize the amount or degree of something.
pos: adj
examples: The army's sheer size made it impossible to resist.
Perhaps as startling as the sheer toll was the devastation to some of the state’s well-known locales. Boardwalks along the beach in Seaside Heights, Belmar and other towns on the Jersey Shore were blown away. Amusement parks, arcades and restaurants all but vanished. Bridges to barrier islands buckled, preventing residents from even inspecting the damage to their property.
Dr. Frank Hoffman, a gynecologist and founder of the program, says he was appalled by the sheer numbers of cases of early-stage breast cancer that were being missed, not just in Germany but around the world.
gloss: Very steep; almost vertical or perpendicular.
pos: adj
examples: It was a sheer drop of 180 feet.
gloss: A sheer curtain or fabric.
pos: noun
examples: Use sheers to maximize natural light.
Lightweight, tightly woven silkies, sheers, lingerie
Synonyms: diaphanous
filmy
gauzy
gossamer
see-through
sheer
Antonyms: opaque
Related words: total
slope
transparent
Derived words: semisheer
sheerish
sheerly
sheerness
sheer-to-waist
supersheer
ultrasheer
Translations: