Note: It is especially applied to the cutting of wool from
sheep or their skins, and the nap from cloth.
2. To separate or sever with shears or a similar instrument;
to cut off; to clip (something) from a surface; as, to
shear a fleece.
Before the golden tresses . . . were shorn away.
--Shak.
3. To reap, as grain. [Scot.] --Jamieson.
4. Fig.: To deprive of property; to fleece.
5. (Mech.) To produce a change of shape in by a shear. See
{Shear}, n., 4.
On his head came razor none, nor shear. --Chaucer.
Short of the wool, and naked from the shear.
--Dryden.
2. A shearing; -- used in designating the age of sheep.
After the second shearing, he is a two-shear ram; .
. . at the expiration of another year, he is a
three-shear ram; the name always taking its date
from the time of shearing. --Youatt.
3. (Engin.) 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}.
4. (Mech.) 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.
{Shear blade}, one of the blades of shears or a shearing
machine.
{Shear hulk}. See under {Hulk}.
{Shear steel}, a steel suitable for shears, scythes, and
other cutting instruments, prepared from fagots of
blistered steel by repeated heating, rolling, and tilting,
to increase its malleability and fineness of texture.
2. (Engin.) 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.