Sheaf
noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A quantity of the stalks and ears of wheat, rye, or other grain, bound together; a bundle of grain or straw.
"O, let me teach you how to knit again / This scattered corn into one mutual sheaf, / These broken limbs again into one body."
- 2 a package of several things tied together for carrying or storing wordnet
- 3 Any collection of things bound together.
"a sheaf of paper"
- 4 A bundle of arrows sufficient to fill a quiver, or the allowance of each archer.
"The sheaf of arrows shook, and rattled in the case."
- 5 A quantity of arrows, usually twenty-four.
"Arrows were anciently made of reeds, afterwards of cornel wood, and occasionally of every species of wood: but according to Roger Ascham, ash was best; arrows were reckoned by sheaves, a sheaf consisted of twenty-four arrows."
Show 3 more definitions
- 6 A sheave.
- 7 An abstract construct in topology that associates data to the open sets of a topological space (i.e. a presheaf) in such a way so as to make the local and global data compatible, generalizing the situation of functions, fiber bundles, manifold structure, etc. on a topological space. Formally, a presheaf ℱ whose sections are, in a technical sense, uniquely determined by their restrictions onto smaller sets: that is, given an open cover U_i of U:; If two sections over U agree under restriction to every U_i, then the sections are the same.
- 8 An abstract construct in topology that associates data to the open sets of a topological space (i.e. a presheaf) in such a way so as to make the local and global data compatible, generalizing the situation of functions, fiber bundles, manifold structure, etc. on a topological space. Formally, a presheaf ℱ whose sections are, in a technical sense, uniquely determined by their restrictions onto smaller sets: that is, given an open cover U_i of U:; Given a family of sections s_i∈ℱ(U_i) such that all pairs (s_i,s_j) agree under restriction to U_i∩U_j, there is a (unique) section s over U whose restriction to U_i is s_i.
- 1 To gather and bind into a sheaf; to make into sheaves transitive
"to sheaf wheat"
- 2 To collect and bind cut grain, or the like; to make sheaves. intransitive
"They that reap must sheaf and bind; Then to cart with Rosalind."
Example
More examples"And no one ever knew a Battle Sheaf to be among the last load at a Harvest Home."
Etymology
From Middle English scheef, from Old English sċēaf, from Proto-West Germanic *skaub, from Proto-Germanic *skauba- (“sheaf”). Cognates Akin to West Frisian skeaf (“sheaf”), Dutch schoof (“sheaf”), German Schaub, Old Norse skauf (“a fox's tail”). Compare further Gothic 𐍃𐌺𐌿𐍆𐍄 (skuft, “hair of the head”), German Schopf (“tuft”).