sheer
/ʃɪɚ/ adjective B1- Very thin or transparent. · Her light, sheer dress caught everyone’s attention.
- Downright; complete; pure. · I think it is sheer genius to invent such a thing.· This poem is sheer nonsense.
- Used to emphasize the amount or degree of something. · The army's sheer size made it impossible to resist.
- Very steep; almost vertical or perpendicular. · It was a sheer drop of 180 feet.
Comparative sheerer · Superlative sheerest
From the library
I made her three good, warm, serviceable ones this fall, and anything more is sheer extravagance.
Madame de Villefort, who was alone in her drawing-room when the count was announced, desired that her son might be brought thither instantly to renew his thanks to the count; and Edward, who heard this great personage talked of for two whole days, made all possible haste to come to him, not from obedience to his mother, or out of any feeling of gratitude to the count, but from sheer curiosity, and that some chance remark might give him the opportunity for making one of the impertinent speeches which made his mother say:
You and I know that he died of sheer fright, and we know also what frightened him, but how are we to get twelve stolid jurymen to know it?
On that side a ridge of rocks ended in a sheer cliff which overlooked a stone-strewn slope.
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