sheer

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“
It is only semi-sheer which is nice, so the color that you see in the tube is pretty close to what it looks like on my lips.

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Definitions (51)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (11)

  1. intransitive and transitive verb To swerve or cause to swerve from a course.
  2. noun A swerving or deviating course.
  3. noun Nautical The upward curve or amount of upward curve of the longitudinal lines of a ship's hull as viewed from the side.
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Examples (50)

  • You only have to look at the queues which build up at peak hour on Glasgow's Kingston Bridge or at Edinburgh's Gogar roundabout to see the sheer wastefulness and inefficiency of trying to move around by car.
  • "It's a sheer waste of life to be drunk all the time but there is just so little by way of help for him." —  Evening Mail news round-up
  • When you look at the sheer area of land required to produce allow even tiny amounts of this stuff to be used in jet-fuel, the picture gets worse. —  Whale Oil Beef Hooked
  • And the sheer isolation of the central Pacific monuments, which helps shield them pollution, also makes policing the waters even more difficult and costly. —  TIME.com: Top Stories
  • The same reason anyone wants to run Sun hardware -- sheer size, (preceived) reliability, as well as a vendor you think you can trust who sells good support packages. most of Sun's hardware nowadays is built on top of AMD (and soon Intel) —  Slashdot: Apache
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Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

utter ·  pure ·  sudden ·  apparent ·  utmost

Used in the same contextWord Family

sheer:   sheered
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (7)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (2)

  1. Probably partly from Low German scheren, to move to and fro (said of boats), and partly from Dutch scheren, to withdraw; see sker-1 in Indo-European roots.
  2. Obsolete shere, thin, clear, partly from Middle English shir, bright, clear (from Old English scīr) and partly from Middle English skir, bright, clean (from Old Norse skærr).

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (5)

  1. from (a) Middle English shere, scheere, schere, skere, from Anglo-Saxon as if * scǣre = Icelandic skærr = Swedish skär = Danish skjær, bright, clear, sheer, pure; merged in Middle English with (b) Middle English shire, schire, schyre, shir, from Anglo-Saxon scīr, bright, = Old Saxon skīr, skīri = OFries. skīre = Middle Dutch schīr = Middle Low German sehīr, Low German schier = Middle High German schīr, German schier, clear, free from knots, = Icelandic skīrr = Swedish skir = Gothic (Moesogothic) skeirs, bright, clear; from Teutonic √ ski, in Anglo-Saxon scīnan, etc., shine: see shine.
  2. from Middle English *schere (= Middle Low German schīre = German schier); from sheer, a.
  3. from Middle English (a) sheren, scheren, skeren (= Old Swedish skæra = Old Danish skære), (b) also schiren, skiren, make bright or pure; from sheer, a.
  4. Formerly also shear, shere; a particular use of sheer, now spelled shear, due to D. influence, or directly from Dutch scheren, shear, cut, barter, jest, reflexive withdraw, go away, warp, stretch, = German scheren, reflexive, withdraw, take oneself off: see shear.
  5. from sheer, v.
 

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/ʃir/
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