/ʃiːf/
OriginFrom 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”).
- 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.”
“Ev’n while the Reaper fills his greedy hands, / And binds the golden Sheafs in brittle bands”
- Any collection of things bound together.
“a sheaf of paper”
“Together the two men march up the aisle and mount the dais, and while Muspole shakes hands with the chairman and his lady, the major draws a sheaf of notes from a briefcase and lays them on the table.”
- 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.”
- 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 consist”
- A sheave.
- If two sections over U agree under restriction to every U_i, then the sections are the same.
- 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.
- transitiveTo gather and bind into a sheaf; to make into sheaves
- intransitiveTo collect and bind cut grain, or the like; to make sheaves.
“They that reap must sheaf and bind; Then to cart with Rosalind.”
Formssheaves(plural) · sheafs(plural) · sheafs(present, singular, third-person) · sheafing(participle, present) · sheafed(participle, past) · sheafed(past)