sheers

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of sheer.

   The decorator layered gauzy sheers beneath the heavier drapes.

   Morning light filtered gently through the bedroom sheers.

   Note

   One spelling covers several different nouns. It can mean light-filtering curtains or fabrics, the curves of ships' decks from bow to stern, or a ship's abrupt swerves off course. Context sorts them out: windows and drapes point to fabric, while bows and gunwales point to the deck line. The same letters also spell the verb for swerving and the shipyard lifting rig, so a sentence about ships deserves a second look.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of sheer.

   The vessel sheers sharply to port to avoid the sandbar.

   Whenever the tide turns, the moored ship sheers against its lines.

   Note

   The present-tense form for he, she or it, and usually it, because the thing that swerves is so often a ship. In older writing the same spelling can mean "shears," as in cutting, because sheer was once a spelling of shear. If the subject is a vessel, read it as swerving. If something is being clipped or cut, read it as the obsolete spelling of shear.

3. 3
   nounplural

   A lifting apparatus formed from two or more spars joined at the top, with tackle hung from the apex to raise heavy weights.

   Like the angled frame of a swing set, but built strong enough to hoist a ship's mast.

   Riggers erected sheers alongside the hull to step the new mast.

   The yard's sheers swung the cannon slowly into the ship's hold.

   Note

   A rigger's word that exists only in the plural. A single apparatus is still sheers, never "a sheer," and it takes a plural verb: the sheers were raised beside the hull. Its fuller name, sheerlegs, makes the spars explicit as legs. Unlike the curtain plural, this is not the plural of a singular noun. It is the name of one machine, used where masts are stepped or heavy guns are hoisted aboard.

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