Word.ws English Dictionary

shearing

shearing adjective: tending to cut or tear. Also the present participle and gerund of shear.

Adjective

shearing (not comparable)

  1. Tending to cut or tear.

Noun

shearing (countable and uncountable, plural shearings)

  1. The act or operation of removing the fleece from a sheep, llama etc. with shears or a shearing machine
  2. The removal of nap from cloth.
  3. The material cut off in this way.
    • the whole shearing of a flock; the shearings from cloth
  4. Deformation by forces acting in opposite directions.
  5. (Scotland) The act or operation of reaping.
  6. The act or operation of dividing with shears.
    • the shearing of metal plates
  7. The process of preparing shear steel; tilting.
  8. The process of making a vertical side cutting in working into a face of coal.

Also used as

shearing is also the present participle and gerund of shear.

shearing is also the alternative form of shearling.

Forms of shearing

pluralshearings

Origin of shearing

From Middle English scherynge; equivalent to shear + -ing.

Words formed from shearing

Phrases with shearing

Questions about shearing

What does shearing mean?
Shearing means tending to cut or tear.
What part of speech is shearing?
Shearing can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near shearing in the dictionary

  1. shearers
  2. shearest
  3. sheareth
  4. shearfree
  5. Shearin
  6. shearing
  7. shearing shed
  8. shearing sheds
  9. shearings
  10. shearinine
  11. Shearins

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shearing (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “shearing.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shearing. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.