2284: cut, shear, and carve Mar 18, 2021

Now replaced by the word 'cut', the words 'shear' and 'carve' used to have more general meanings. 'Carve' now is restricted to cutting a material into a certain shape, engraving, or cutting meat. In the case of 'shear', this actually comes from the same Indo European root as 'cut', that being *ker-, leading to other words including 'carrion', 'curt', 'skirmish', 'skirt', 'scrap', 'shard', 'scar' and many more. That said, now 'shear' also has a fairly specific, restricted use especially relating to hair and other cuttings of top-layers of things.