Sheer

• POS: Noun, Verb (usu participle), Verb (intransitive), Adjective, Adverb

CIDE DICTIONARY

Sheer, a. [OE. shere, skere, pure, bright, Icel. skrr; akin to skīrr, AS. scīr, OS. skīri, MHG. schīr, G. schier, Dan. skr, Sw. skär, Goth. skeirs clear, and E. shine. Shine, v. i.].

•  Bright; clear; pure; unmixed.  Shak.  [1913 Webster]

  "Thou sheer, immaculate, and silver fountain."  [1913 Webster]
•  Very thin or transparent; -- applied to fabrics; as, sheer muslin.  [1913 Webster]
•  Being only what it seems to be; obvious; simple; mere; downright; as, sheer folly; sheer nonsense.  De Quincey.  [1913 Webster]

  "It is not a sheer advantage to have several strings to one's bow."  [1913 Webster]
•  Stright up and down; vertical; prpendicular.  [1913 Webster]

  "A sheer precipice of a thousand feet."  [1913 Webster]

  "It was at least
  Nine roods of sheer ascent."  [1913 Webster]

Sheer, adv. 

 Clean; quite; at once.  Milton.  [1913 Webster]

Sheer, v. t. [See Shear.].

 To shear.  Dryden.  [1913 Webster]

Sheer, v. i. [D. sheren to shear, cut, withdraw, warp. See Shear.].

 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.  [1913 Webster]

To sheer off, to turn or move aside to a distance; to move away. -- To sheer up, to approach obliquely.

Sheer, n. 

•  The longitudinal upward curvature of the deck, gunwale, and lines of a vessel, as when viewed from the side.  [1913 Webster]
•  A turn or change in a course.  [1913 Webster]

  "Give the canoe a sheer and get nearer to the shore."  [1913 Webster]
•  Shears See Shear.  [1913 Webster]

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.

OXFORD DICTIONARY

Sheer, adj. & adv.
--adj.
1 no more or less than; mere, unqualified, absolute (sheer luck; sheer determination).
2 (of a cliff or ascent etc.) perpendicular; very steep.
3 (of a textile) very thin; diaphanous.
--adv.
1 directly, outright.
2 perpendicularly.

Derivative

sheerly adv. sheerness n.

Sheer, v. & n.
--v.intr.
1 esp. Naut. swerve or change course.
2 (foll. by away, off) go away, esp. from a person or topic one dislikes or fears.
--n. Naut. a deviation from a course.

Sheer, n. the upward slope of a ship's lines towards the bow and stern.

Etymology

prob. f. SHEAR n.

THESAURUS

Sheer

aberrancy, aberration, about ship, abrupt, absolute, absolutely, airy, all-embracing, all-encompassing, all-out, all-pervading, angle, angle off, aplomb, arduous, arrant, at right angles, avert, back and fill, bare, bear away, bear off, bear to starboard, beat, beat about, bend, bent, bias, blasted, blessed, bluff, bold, born, box off, branch off, branching off, break, breakneck, bring about, bring round, broad-based, cant, cant round, cast, cast about, change course, change the bearing, change the heading, chiffon, circuitousness, clarified, clean, clear, clear as crystal, come about, complete, comprehensive, confounded, congenital, consummate, corner, crook, crystal, crystal-clear, crystalline, curve, declination, deep-dyed, deflect, depart from, departure, detour, deviance, deviancy, deviate, deviation, deviousness, diaphane, diaphanous, digress, digression, dip, discursion, distilled, divagate, divagation, divaricate, divarication, diverge, divergence, diversion, divert, dogleg, double, double a point, downright, drift, drifting, dyed-in-the-wool, egregious, errantry, excursion, excursus, exhaustive, exorbitation, fetch about, filmy, flimsy, gauzy, go about, gossamer, gossamery, gross, gybe, hairpin, headlong, heave round, heel, indirection, infernal, intensive, irretrievably, irrevocably, jibe, jibe all standing, light-pervious, limpid, lucid, lurch, mere, miss stays, naked, neat, nonopaque, oblique, obliquity, omnibus, omnipresent, orthodiagonal, orthogonal, out-and-out, outright, peekaboo, pellucid, pererration, perfect, perfectly, perpendicular, perpendicularly, pervasive, pivot, plain, plumb, plunging, ply, precipitate, precipitous, pure, purified, put about, put back, quite, radical, rambling, rank, rapid, rectified, regular, revealing, right, right-angle, right-angled, right-angular, round a point, see-through, sharp, sheerly, shift, shifting, shifting course, shifting path, sideling, simple, skew, slant, slew, slue, square, stark, steep, stickle, straight, straight-up, straight-up-and-down, straying, sway, sweep, sweeping, swerve, swerving, swing round, swing the stern, swinging, tack, thin, thorough, thoroughgoing, through-and-through, throw about, total, translucent, transparent, transpicuous, trend, turn, turn aside, turn back, turning, twist, ubiquitous, unadorned, unadulterated, unalloyed, unblended, unclouded, uncombined, uncompounded, unconditional, uncorrupted, undiluted, unenhanced, unfortified, universal, unleavened, unmingled, unmitigated, unmixed, unqualified, unrelievedly, unreserved, unrestricted, unsophisticated, untinged, up and down, up-and-down, utter, variation, vary, veer, veritable, vertical, volte-face, wandering, warp, wear, wear ship, wheel, whip, whirl, wholesale, wind, yaw, zigzag

ROGET THESAURUS

Sheer

Smallness

N smallness, littleness, tenuity, paucity, fewness, meanness, insignificance (unimportance), mediocrity, moderation, small quantity, modicum, trace, hint, minimum, vanishing point, material point, atom, particle, molecule, corpuscle, point, speck, dot, mote, jot, iota, ace, minutiae, details, look, thought, idea, soupcon, dab, dight, whit, tittle, shade, shadow, spark, scintilla, gleam, touch, cast, grain, scruple, granule, globule, minim, sup, sip, sop, spice, drop, droplet, sprinkling, dash, morceau, screed, smack, tinge, tincture, inch, patch, scantling, tatter, cantlet, flitter, gobbet, mite, bit, morsel, crumb, seed, fritter, shive, snip, snippet, snick, snack, snatch, slip, scrag, chip, chipping, shiver, sliver, driblet, clipping, paring, shaving, hair, nutshell, thimbleful, spoonful, handful, capful, mouthful, fragment, fraction, drop in the ocean, animalcule, trifle, mere nothing, next to nothing, hardly anything, just enough to swear by, the shadow of a shade, finiteness, finite quantity, small, little, diminutive, minute, fine, inconsiderable, paltry, faint, slender, light, slight, scanty, scant, limited, meager, sparing, few, low, so-so, middling, tolerable, no great shakes, below par, under par, below the mark, at a low ebb, halfway, moderate, modest, tender, subtle, inappreciable, evanescent, infinitesimal, homeopathic, very small, atomic, corpuscular, microscopic, molecular, subatomic, mere, simple, sheer, stark, bare, near run, dull, petty, shallow, stolid, ungifted, unintelligent, to a small extent, on a small scale, a little bit, a wee bit, slightly, imperceptibly, miserably, wretchedly, insufficiently, imperfectly, faintly, passably, pretty well, well enough, partially, in part, in a certain degree, to a certain degree, to a certain extent, comparatively, some, rather in some degree, in some measure, something, somewhat, simply, only, purely, merely, at least, at the least, at most, at the most, ever so little, as little as may be, tant soit peu, in ever so small a degree, thus far, pro tanto, within bounds, in a manner, after a fashion, so to speak, almost, nearly, well-nigh, short of, not quite, all but, near upon, close upon, peu s'en faut, near the mark, within an ace of, within an inch of, on the brink of, scarcely, hardly, barely, only just, no more than, about, thereabouts, somewhere about, nearly, say, be the same, be little more or less, no ways, no way, no wise, not at all, not in the least, not a bit, not a bit of it, not a whit, not a jot, not a shadow, in no wise, in no respect, by no means, by no manner of means, on no account, at no hand, dare pondus idonea fumo, magno conatu magnas nugas, small sands the mountain, moments make the year.

Simpleness

N simpleness, purity, homogeneity, elimination, sifting, purification, simple, uniform, of a piece, homogeneous, single, pure, sheer, neat, unmixed, unmingled, unblended, uncombined, uncompounded, elementary, undecomposed, unadulterated, unsophisticated, unalloyed, untinged, unfortified, pur et simple, incomplex, free from, exempt from, exclusive, simple, only.

Completeness

N completeness, completion, integration, allness, entirety, perfection, solidity, solidarity, unity, all, ne plus ultra, ideal, limit, complement, supplement, make-weight, filling, up, impletion, saturation, saturity, high water, high tide, flood tide, spring tide, fill, load, bumper, bellyful, brimmer, sufficiency, complete, entire, whole, perfect, full, good, absolute, thorough, plenary, solid, undivided, with all its parts, all- sided, exhaustive, radical, sweeping, thorough-going, dead, regular, consummate, unmitigated, sheer, unqualified, unconditional, free, abundant, brimming, brimful, topful, topfull, chock full, choke full, as full as an egg is of meat, as full as a vetch, saturated, crammed, replete, fraught, laden, full-laden, full-fraught, full-charged, heavy laden, completing, supplemental, supplementary, ascititious, completely, altogether, outright, wholly, totally, in toto, quite, all out, over head and ears, effectually, for good and all, nicely, fully, through thick and thin, head and shoulders, neck and heel, neck and crop, in all respects, in every respect, at all points, out and out, to all intents and purposes, toto coelo, utterly, clean, clean as a whistle, to the full, to the utmost, to the backbone, hollow, stark, heart and soul, root and branch, down to the ground, to the top of one's bent, as far as possible, a outrance, throughout, from first to last, from beginning to end, from end to end, from one end to the other, from Dan to Beersheba, from head to foot, from top to toe, from top to bottom, de fond en comble, a fond, a capite ad calcem, ab ovo usque ad mala, fore and aft, every, whit, every inch, cap-a-pie, to the end of the chapter, up to the brim, up to the ears, up to the eyes, as a as can be, on all accounts, sous tous les rapports, with a vengeance, with a witness, falsus in uno falsus in omnibus, false in one thing, false in everything, omnem movere lapidem, una scopa nuova spazza bene.