Shear

Shear as a noun could mean:

• Bias (textile), in clothing design, fabric may be cut on the shear
• Cosmic shear, an effect of distortion of image of distant galaxies due to deflection of light by matter, as predicted by general relativity (see also weak lensing and gravitational lens)
• Geological shear, a form of fault
• Guillotine (metalwork), also called a shear, a machine used to cut sheet metal
• Shear line (locksmithing), in lockpicking, where the inner cylinder ends and the outer cylinder begins in a cylinder lock
• Shear line (meteorology), an area of wind shear
• Shear (mathematics), a particular kind of linear mapping, also called transvections
• Shear stress in physics, refers to a stress state that will cause shearing (see verb below) when it exceeds a material's shear strength,
• Wind shear, a difference in wind speed or direction between two wind currents in the atmosphere

Shear as a verb or shearing could mean:

• Sheep shearing, the process of removing the wool from a sheep
• Shearing interferometer, in optics, a simple and very common means to check the collimation of beams by observing interference
• Shearing (physics), the deformation of a material substance in which parallel internal surfaces slide past one another,
• Skin, specifically, the tearing and splitting of the layers