Divide vs. Shear

(transitive) To split or separate (something) into two or more parts.

Example: ‘a wall divides two houses; a stream divides the towns’;

(transitive) To share (something) by dividing it.

Example: ‘How shall we divide this pie?’;

To calculate the number (the quotient) by which you must multiply one given number (the divisor) to produce a second given number (the dividend).

Example: ‘If you divide 6 by 3, you get 2.’;

To be a divisor of.

Example: ‘3 divides 6.’;

(intransitive) To separate into two or more parts.

Of a cell, to reproduce by dividing.

To disunite in opinion or interest; to make discordant or hostile; to set at variance.

(obsolete) To break friendship; to fall out.

(obsolete) To have a share; to partake.

To vote, as in the British Parliament, by the members separating themselves into two parties (as on opposite sides of the hall or in opposite lobbies), that is, the ayes dividing from the noes.

To mark divisions on; to graduate.

Example: ‘to divide a sextant’;

(music) To play or sing in a florid style, or with variations.

A thing that divides.

Example: ‘Stay on your side of the divide, please.’;

An act of dividing.

Example: ‘The divide left most of the good land on my share of the property.’;

A distancing between two people or things.

Example: ‘There is a great divide between us.’;

(geography) A large chasm, gorge, or ravine between two areas of land.

Example: ‘If you're heading to the coast, you'll have to cross the divide first.’; ‘The team crossed streams and jumped across deep, narrow divides in the glacier. File:The team crossed streams and jumped across deep, narrow divides in the glacier.ogg’;

To part asunder (a whole); to sever into two or more parts or pieces; to sunder; to separate into parts.

Example: ‘Divide the living child in two.’;

To cause to be separate; to keep apart by a partition, or by an imaginary line or limit; as, a wall divides two houses; a stream divides the towns.

Example: ‘Let it divide the waters from the waters.’;

To make partition of among a number; to apportion, as profits of stock among proprietors; to give in shares; to distribute; to mete out; to share.

Example: ‘True justice unto people to divide.’; ‘Ye shall divide the land by lot.’;

To disunite in opinion or interest; to make discordant or hostile; to set at variance.

Example: ‘If a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom can not stand.’; ‘Every family became now divided within itself.’;

To separate into two parts, in order to ascertain the votes for and against a measure; as, to divide a legislative house upon a question.

To subject to arithmetical division.

To separate into species; - said of a genus or generic term.

To mark divisions on; to graduate; as, to divide a sextant.

To play or sing in a florid style, or with variations.

To be separated; to part; to open; to go asunder.

Example: ‘The Indo-Germanic family divides into three groups.’;

To cause separation; to disunite.

Example: ‘A gulf, a strait, the sea intervening between islands, divide less than the matted forest.’;

To break friendship; to fall out.

To have a share; to partake.

To vote, as in the British Parliament, by the members separating themselves into two parties (as on opposite sides of the hall or in opposite lobbies), that is, the ayes dividing from the noes.

Example: ‘The emperors sat, voted, and divided with their equals.’;

A dividing ridge of land between the tributaries of two streams; also called watershed and water parting. A divide on either side of which the waters drain into two different oceans is called a continental divide.

a serious disagreement between two groups of people (typically producing tension or hostility)

a ridge of land that separates two adjacent river systems

separate into parts or portions;

Example: ‘divide the cake into three equal parts’; ‘The British carved up the Ottoman Empire after World War I’;

perform a division;

Example: ‘Can you divide 49 by seven?’;

act as a barrier between; stand between;

Example: ‘The mountain range divides the two countries’;

come apart;

Example: ‘The two pieces that we had glued separated’;

make a division or separation

force, take, or pull apart;

Example: ‘He separated the fighting children’; ‘Moses parted the Red Sea’;

separate or be separated into parts

Example: ‘the cell clusters began to divide rapidly’; ‘consumer magazines can be divided into a number of categories’;

separate (something) into portions and share out among a number of people

Example: ‘profits from his single were divided between a number of charities’; ‘Jack divided up the rest of the cash’;

allocate (different parts of one's time or efforts) to different activities or places

Example: ‘the last years of her life were divided between Bermuda and Paris’;

form a boundary between (two people or things)

Example: ‘glass panels divide the bar from the TV room’;

(of a legislative assembly) separate or be separated into two groups for voting

Example: ‘the House divided: Ayes 287, Noes 196’; ‘the Party decided to put down an amendment and thus divide the House’;

disagree or cause to disagree

Example: ‘cities where politicians frequently divide along racial lines’; ‘the question had divided Frenchmen since the Revolution’;

find how many times (a number) contains another

Example: ‘36 divided by 2 equals 18’;

(of a number) be susceptible of division without a remainder

Example: ‘30 does not divide by 8’;

find how many times (a number) is contained in another

Example: ‘divide 4 into 20’;

(of a number) be contained in a number without a remainder

Example: ‘3 divides into 15’;

a difference or disagreement between two groups, typically producing tension

Example: ‘there was still a profound cultural divide between the parties’;

a boundary between two things

Example: ‘symbolically, the difference of sex is a divide’;

a ridge or line of high ground forming the division between two valleys or river systems.

To cut, originally with a sword or other bladed weapon, now usually with shears, or as if using shears.

To remove the fleece from a sheep etc by clipping.

(physics) To deform because of forces pushing in opposite directions.

(Scotland) To reap, as grain.

(figurative) To deprive of property; to fleece.

A cutting tool similar to scissors, but often larger.

The act of shearing, or something removed by shearing.

(physics) Forces that push in opposite directions.

(geology) The response of a rock to deformation usually by compressive stress, resulting in particular textures.

misspelling of sheer

To cut, clip, or sever anything from with shears or a like instrument; as, to shear sheep; to shear cloth.

To separate or sever with shears or a similar instrument; to cut off; to clip (something) from a surface; as, to shear a fleece.

Example: ‘Before the golden tresses . . . were shorn away.’;

To reap, as grain.

Fig.: To deprive of property; to fleece.

To produce a change of shape in by a shear. See Shear, n., 4.

To deviate. See Sheer.

To become more or less completely divided, as a body under the action of forces, by the sliding of two contiguous parts relatively to each other in a direction parallel to their plane of contact.

A pair of shears; - now always used in the plural, but formerly also in the singular. See Shears.

Example: ‘On his head came razor none, nor shear.’; ‘Short of the wool, and naked from the shear.’;

A shearing; - used in designating the age of sheep.

Example: ‘After the second shearing, he is a two-shear ram; . . . at the expiration of another year, he is a three-shear ram; the name always taking its date from the time of shearing.’;

An action, resulting from applied forces, which tends to cause two contiguous parts of a body to slide relatively to each other in a direction parallel to their plane of contact; - also called shearing stress, and tangential stress.

A strain, or change of shape, of an elastic body, consisting of an extension in one direction, an equal compression in a perpendicular direction, with an unchanged magnitude in the third direction.

(physics) a deformation of an object in which parallel planes remain parallel but are shifted in a direction parallel to themselves;

Example: ‘the shear changed the quadrilateral into a parallelogram’;

(usually plural) large scissors with strong blades

a large edge tool that cuts sheet metal by passing a blade through it

cut with shears;

Example: ‘shear hedges’;

shear the wool from;

Example: ‘shear sheep’;

cut or cut through with shears

cut the wool off (a sheep or other animal)

Example: ‘Paul has never sheared a sheep before’; ‘demonstrations of sheep shearing’;

cut off (something such as hair, wool, or grass), with scissors or shears

Example: ‘I'll shear off all that fleece’;

have something cut off

Example: ‘they were shorn of their hair’; ‘the richest man in the US was shorn of nearly $2 billion’;

break off or cause to break off, owing to a structural strain

Example: ‘the gear sheared and jammed in the rear wheel’; ‘the left wing had been almost completely sheared off’;

a strain produced by pressure in the structure of a substance, when its layers are laterally shifted in relation to each other

Example: ‘aluminium is not very resilient to shear forces’; ‘the water from the upper source is emitted at the same speed as the main flow; there is thus no shear’;