shear

«shear» in Mova's school dictionary: to cut off its wool — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 3 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

verb (shear, shears, sheared, shorn or sheared, shearing); noun (shears = big scissors; shear in science)

meaning for a pupil

1) To shear a sheep is to cut off its wool. tree →

2) To shear can mean to cut or break something off, often by a strong sideways force: the bolt sheared off. tree →

3) Shears (plural) are large scissors for cutting hedges, grass or wool. tree →

4) (science) Shear is a force that pushes parts of something sideways in opposite directions, like rubbing your hands together. tree →

sense in the lessons

Farming and everyday life: sheep shearing happens in spring in New Zealand, Australia, the UK and Ireland; shearers can shear hundreds of sheep a day. Gardening: hedge shears. Science and engineering: shear forces can snap bolts or make rocks slide in an earthquake; «wind shear» is dangerous for planes.

examples

• The farmer will shear the sheep in spring. tree →
• The sheep looked tiny after it was shorn. tree →
• Grandpa trims the hedge with garden shears. tree →
• The strong wind sheared a branch off the tree. tree →
• Sheep shearing is a big sport in New Zealand. tree →
• In science we learned how shear forces break things. tree →
• The shearers worked fast all day. tree →

note

Homophone trap: «shear» (cut) sounds like «sheer» (very steep; complete; see-through, as in sheer curtains). Past participle: shorn (for sheep or hair) or sheared (for metal). «Shears» is plural like «scissors»: «a pair of shears».

In the corpora

• Use garden tools only with a grown-up; lay a rake teeth down and carry shears closed and pointing down.
• Now Laban was gone to shear his sheep.
• And David heard in the wilderness that Nabal was shearing his sheep.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «shear» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.