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To cut, clip, or sever anything from with shears or a like instrument; as, to shear sheep; to shear cloth.

See under Shear.

The black skimmer. See Skimmer.

See Shard. [Obs.]

One who shears. Like a lamb dumb before his shearer. Acts viii. 32.

The act or operation of clipping with shears or a shearing machine, as the wool from sheep, or the nap from cloth.

A sheep but once sheared.

One whose occupation is to shear cloth.

Dung; excrement. [Obs.] [Written also shern.] Holland.

of the material to be cut, -- used for cutting cloth and other substances. Fate urged the shears, and cut the sylph in twain. Pope.

The common tern.

nus Puffinus and related genera. They are allied to the petrels, but are larger. The Manx shearwater (P. Anglorum), the dusky shearwater (P. obscurus), and the greater shearwater (P. major), are well-known species of the North Atlantic. See Hagdon.

To dishearten. [Obs.]

nd hope; to depress the spirits of; to deject. Regiments . . . utterly disorganized and disheartened. Macaulay.

Discouragement; dejection; depression of spirits.

To hear incorrectly.

One who shears, or cuts off the wool from, sheep.

Act of shearing sheep.

To dismay; to dishearten; to daunt. [Obs. or Archaic] The Silures, to amate the new general, rumored the overthrow greater than was true. Milton.

To shear, as the buttocks and tails of sheep. [Prov. Eng.] Halliwell.