sheer
/ˈʃɪə/
"sheer" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“sheer” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #7,060 in English word frequency and used as an adjective.
- #7,060
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
- 7
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Very thin or transparent.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | sheer |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | /ˈʃɪə/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #7,060 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “sheer” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for sheer is 5 letters long, classified as an adjective, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈʃɪə/. Corpus data places it at rank #7,060 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 5 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 7 likely wrong-spelling variants for sheer, with forms such as "hseer", "seher", and "sheerr". Each of these forms differs from the correct spelling by one small edit: a doubled letter, a dropped silent letter, or a substituted vowel. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "shoe", "Shen", "shep", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English shere, scheere, schere, skere, from Old English sċǣre (“pure, sheer; shining, clear”), from Proto-Germanic *skairiz; supplanted the semantically close shire (dialectal), from Middle English schyre, schire, shire, shir, from Old English s… The correct English form is sheer, spelled S-H-E-E-R.
Definition
- 1Very thin or transparent.
- 2Pure in composition; unmixed; unadulterated.
- 3Downright; complete; pure.
- 4Used to emphasize the amount or degree of something.
- 5Very steep; almost vertical or perpendicular.
Etymology
From Middle English shere, scheere, schere, skere, from Old English sċǣre (“pure, sheer; shining, clear”), from Proto-Germanic *skairiz; supplanted the semantically close shire (dialectal), from Middle English schyre, schire, shire, shir, from Old English sċīr (“clear, bright; brilliant, gleaming, shining, splendid, resplendent; pure”), beside which existed Middle English skyr, from Old Norse skírr (“pure, bright, clear”), both from Proto-Germanic *skīriz (“pure, sheer”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ḱeh₁y- (“luster, gloss, shadow”). Cognate with Danish skær, German schier (“sheer”), German Low German schier (“sheer, pure, unadulterated”; “completely, almost”), Dutch schier (“almost”), Gothic 𐍃𐌺𐌴𐌹𐍂𐍃 (skeirs, “clear, lucid”). Outside Germanic, cognate to Albanian hir (“grace, beauty; goodwill”).
Antonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: hseer,seher,sheerr,sher,shere,shheer,ssheer
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of sheer - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “sheer”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is S-H-E-E-R - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˈʃɪə/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “shoe” - see the side-by-side comparison. sheer vs shoe
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.