| • | To cut, clip, or sever anything from with shears or a like instrument; as, to shear sheep; to shear cloth. |
| • | To separate or sever with shears or a similar instrument; to cut off; to clip (something) from a surface; as, to shear a fleece. |
| • | To reap, as grain. |
| • | Fig.: To deprive of property; to fleece. |
| • | To produce a change of shape in by a shear. See Shear, n., 4. |
| • | A pair of shears; -- now always used in the plural, but formerly also in the singular. See Shears. |
| • | A shearing; -- used in designating the age of sheep. |
| • | An action, resulting from applied forces, which tends to cause two contiguous parts of a body to slide relatively to each other in a direction parallel to their plane of contact; -- also called shearing stress, and tangential stress. |
| • | A strain, or change of shape, of an elastic body, consisting of an extension in one direction, an equal compression in a perpendicular direction, with an unchanged magnitude in the third direction. |
| • | To deviate. See Sheer. |
| • | 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. |
