sheet
Pluralsheets
Pluralsheets
Formssheets, sheeting, sheeted
- 1A piece of thin cloth used to cover a mattress or to lie under while sleeping.
He tucked the sheet under the corners of the mattress.
Fresh sheets smell wonderful after a day drying in the sun.
Note
The oldest household meaning, and the clearest root of the word: Old English sċīete meant a piece of linen cloth. Sheets also wrapped the dead. In Shakespeare's Othello a speaker asks to be shrouded in one. The King James Bible of 1611 has a great sheet knit at the four corners let down from heaven. In everyday use the noun is countable: you change the sheets.
- 2A rectangular piece of paper prepared for writing, drawing, drafting, wrapping, or making packaging, but not scraps or small pieces meant for recycling.
He grabbed a fresh sheet of paper to sketch the diagram.
The printer jammed after feeding only a few sheets.
Note
Bookmaking counts paper two ways. Folded once in half, as in most modern books, a sheet yields two leaves and four pages. Unfolded, a sheet and a leaf are the same thing. Paper weight is reckoned by the sheet too: 20-pound paper is paper whose ream of 500 sheets, 22 by 17 inches, weighs 20 pounds. Scraps and torn bits never qualify as sheets.
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- 6A wide expanse or stretch of something.
A sheet of flame engulfed the dry brush within seconds.
Vast sheets of bluebells covered the forest floor.
Similarexpanse, carpet, wall, stretch, blanket
Note
The plural comes most naturally here: sheets of rain, sheets of fire, sheets of light. The word turns a mass into broad moving planes, so it suits anything that seems to travel as a surface. Optics keeps it as a working term for the horizontal and vertical light sheets a laser scanner produces. Rain falling hard as a near-solid wall has its own entry in the downpour meaning.
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- 8To put a covering of cloth, paper, or similar material around or over something.
Movers sheet the antiques carefully before loading the truck.
The workers sheeted the scaffolding to contain the debris.
Similarcover, wrap, shroud, drape
Note
The covering itself can be the subject: Shakespeare writes in Antony and Cleopatra of the time "when snow the pasture sheets." In practical use a person does the covering, as when painters sheet a floor before starting work. Either way the verb is transitive and needs an object: you sheet something.
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- 10To pour down heavily, as rain does in a downpour.
Rain sheeted against the windows all through the night.
When the clouds burst, the rain will sheet down in moments.
Similarpour, pelt, lash, teem, stream
Note
The verb of a downpour, and it rarely stands alone: rain sheets down, or sheets against a window. It is intransitive and used of rain and other precipitation. The picture is the same near-solid wall as the noun for driving rain, set in motion.
- 11A rope or line used to control the angle and tension of a sail.
The crew trimmed the mainsail by hauling in the sheet.
A sudden gust tore the sheet from his hands.
Note
This rope comes from a different Old English strand: sċēata, the lower corner of a sail. It is named for the corner it holds. Sailors haul a sheet in or ease it out to trim the sail. Three sheets to the wind pictures a four-cornered sail tethered by only one of its sheets, with the other three loose, so the sail is useless.
- 12To trim a sail by hauling in or easing the line that controls it.
Crew members sheet the genoa hard as the boat turns upwind.
You should sheet the mainsail in before the gust hits.
Similartrim
Note
The verb grows straight from the rope. To sheet a sail is to work its line, hauling it in or paying it out to tune the sail's angle to the wind. Sailors pair it with in, as in sheet the mainsail in, when they want the sail flatter and harder-working.
- 13An extensive layer of igneous rock that intruded between or spread over other rock strata.
The survey revealed a basalt sheet sandwiched between two layers of shale.
Erosion exposed an igneous sheet stretching for miles across the plateau.
Note
Geologists use the word for igneous rock that lies broad and flat across a region. It was either forced in between existing strata or spread over them. Orientation is what defines it: a sheet runs parallel to the bedding, which separates it from a dike cutting across the layers. A basalt sheet between beds of shale is the textbook picture.
- 14The marked strip of ice on which a game of curling is played.
Four teams competed across two sheets at the local club.
The skip studied the sheet before delivering the final stone.
Note
Curlers count their ice in sheets. A club with room for several games at once has several sheets, each a prepared strip with a scoring house at each end. Stones are delivered down the length of the sheet toward the house. Speak of the ice in general, but of a sheet when you mean one playing lane.
- 15A sail, especially the canvas spread to catch the wind and drive a vessel forward.
The schooner's sheets billowed against a bright sky.
A torn sheet hung limp from the mast after the storm.
Similarsail
Note
A poet's sail rather than a sailor's: Dryden writes of folded Sheets in Annus Mirabilis (1667). On a working boat the word names the rope that trims a sail. Calling the canvas itself a sheet therefore reads as literary or loose. In practical writing, say sail. Keep this use for verse or deliberate period color.
- 16A thin layer of wood veneer applied as a surface covering.
The cabinetmaker pressed a fresh sheet over the worn surface.
Several sheets of walnut veneer were laid up to form the panel.
Similarveneer
Note
A loose usage for what woodworkers more often call a layer or ply of veneer. That thinly sliced wood is bonded face to face to build up plywood, or laid over a base as a decorative finish. In careful writing, say a sheet of veneer or simply veneer. Using sheet alone to mean the veneer itself reads as nonstandard.
- 17A distinct level or stage within a video game that the player works through.
Players had to memorize every trap to beat the final sheet.
If you land safely you will gain 30 extra points and move to the next sheet.
1984, Sinclair ProgramsSimilarlevel, stage, screen, round
Note
Home-computer gaming of the early 1980s called its levels sheets. Sinclair User in 1983 and Crash in 1984 describe moving from the first sheet to the second, and a player could land safely to reach the next sheet. The word has dated. Level or stage is what a modern reader expects, so sheet now marks writing of that era.
- 18The space in the front or rear of a boat where there are no rowers.
The passengers settled into the stern sheet as the rowers took up their oars.
Water pooled in the forward sheet during the crossing.
Note
A boatman's word that nearly always appears in the plural and in pairs: fore sheets at the bow, stern sheets at the stern. These are the clear spaces beyond the rowing benches, where passengers or the steersman sit. Nothing here is a rope. Do not confuse it with the line that trims a sail, though both belong to small-boat talk.
- 19Euphemistic form of shit.
Aw sheet, the deadline got moved up to tomorrow.
He looked at the flat tire and just whispered, sheet.
Note
A separate word with no tie to the linen: a minced oath that bends the vowel of shit while keeping its shape. It is mostly an exclamation (aw, sheet). As an uncountable noun it can stand in for the taboo word's milder senses, such as rubbish. That makes a line like "this sheet is disgusting" ambiguous on the page.
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Practice
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Origins
From Middle English schete, partly from Old English sċīete ("a sheet, a piece of linen cloth") and partly from Old English sċēata/sċēat ("a corner, angle; the lower corner of a sail"), all from Proto-Germanic *skautijǭ, *skautaz ("corner, wedge, lap"), ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European root *(s)kewd- ("to throw, shoot, rush"). It is related to Dutch schoot, German Schoß, Swedish sköt, and Icelandic skaut.
A minced oath (a milder substitute) for "shit."