Scherynge

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Cutting or clipping the wool or hair from a sheep or other animal, an archaic form of shearing
2. The act of trimming away the fleece of a sheep, a term used in older English texts
3. Removing the woolly coat from livestock by cutting it close, as recorded in Middle English

Etymology: The spelling "scherynge" is a Middle English form of "shearing," the act of cutting wool from sheep or trimming cloth. It comes from the Old English verb "sceran," meaning to cut or clip, which also gave modern English "shear" and is related to Dutch "scheren" and German "scheren." The "-ing" ending turns the verb into a noun for the activity itself. Wool was central to the medieval English economy, so shearing time was a major seasonal event on farms and estates, and the term appears often in records of that trade. Modern "sheer," meaning thin or pure, is a separate word from a different Old English source, so the two are not related despite their similar spelling.