Sheerly

adv

adv ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adverb
  1. 1
    Absolutely; purely; quite.

    "On a sheerly technical plane, the projections used for the backgrounds were very effective, particularly in the third act, where a sunset faded most convincingly."

  2. 2
    At a very steep angle; precipitously.

    "The pit dropped sheerly from my feet, but a little way along, the rubbish afforded a practicable slope to the summit of the ruins."

  3. 3
    At once. obsolete

Synonyms

All synonyms
plumbsheersquareup and down

Example

More examples

"On a sheerly technical plane, the projections used for the backgrounds were very effective, particularly in the third act, where a sunset faded most convincingly."

Etymology

From Middle English schyrly, equivalent to sheer + -ly.

Related phrases

at once

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.