sheer
23
4.1
- adjective
- /ʃɪr/
:
vertical
- Straight sheer cliffs with no possible handholds.
- a sheer cliff
- a sheer rock face
- a sheer drop
I just the most ominous sheer drop.
- I just the most ominous sheer drop.
- It was a sheer Cliff down and then into the run.
- Stone pillars, isolated ejecta, sheer cliffs, oddly smooth crater interiors, the broad circular peaks of the great volcanoes.
Examples
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Here is a sheer vertical Cliff, one to two kilometres high.
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The hikers cautiously approached the edge, where there was a sheer drop into the valley below.
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Everything else is sheer rock to the edge of the water.
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- It's a sheer rock wall.
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As you see the face is vertical and almost sheer.
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The Buick wound higher and higher along a road with a sheer drop on one side.
Fiction book (1994) -
Below, on either side, sheer walls of rock and ice plunged to nothingness.
Fiction book (1995) -
The final climb brought us through a narrow gorge bounded by sheer cliffs of beige rock.
Academic text (1991) -
The sun lights up spectacular sheer cliffs that plunge 1,000 feet from a ruggedly beautiful high-desert plateau.
Fiction book (1990) -
The cliff has a sheer face that climbers find challenging to ascend.
Synonyms
131
2.5
Having a very sharp slope or almost vertical angle
4
6.3
Very steep and almost straight up, like a cliff
1
6.7
So steep that it drops almost straight down
1
4.3
A thing with sides that rise almost straight up
Very steep and high, like the edge of a cliff
Antonyms
Compounds
How Steep
Surface Forms
Etymology
Sheer: The adjective sheer for a very steep or almost vertical surface is easy to picture — imagine a cliff that looks 'sheared' off, as if cut straight down; this links to shear, 'to cut', which helps explain why a sheer face is so steep.