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

Act of shearing sheep.

To burn. [Obs.] Chaucer. Consuming fire brent his shearing house or stall. W. Browne.

A cutting; a shearing.

A machine for cropping, as for shearing off bolts or rod iron, or for facing cloth.

Very fine, sifted, woolen refuse, especially that from shearing the nap of cloths, used as a coating for wall paper to give it a velvety or clothlike appearance; also, the dust of vegetable fiber used for a similar purpose. Flock bed, a bed filled with flocks or locks of coarse wool, or pieces of cloth cut up fine. "On…

Any machine or instrument for cutting or shearing, resembling in its action a guillotine.

ve turning; sometimes holding by friction alone, but more frequently by its resistance to shearing, being usually embedded partly in the shaft and partly in the crank, pulley, etc.

A feast at the time of shearing lambs.

To cut off; to remove by clipping, shearing, etc.; to mow or crop; -- sometimes with off; as, to poll the hair; to poll wool; to poll grass. Who, as he polled off his dart's head, so sure he had decreed That all the counsels of their war he would poll off like it. Chapman.

A shearing; -- used in designating the age of sheep. After the second shearing, he is a two-sher 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.

A similar instrument the blades of which are extensions of a curved spring, -- used for shearing sheep or skins.

ct from the morling, or skin taken from the dead sheep; also, a sheep of the first year's shearing. [Prov. Eng.]

The shearing of a pile of books which are as yet uncovered, or out of boards. Knight.

ded with air, or rather affected with a violent inflammation. It occurs immediately after shearing.