Language Of Confusion: Maximum Carnage, Part IV

We’ve got a bunch more of these to look at! All are descended from the Proto Indo European root sker-, to cut. Though it may not seem like it at times.
 
First we’re going to look at shard—all the words this week start with sh, I guess they got rid of the K sound. It comes from the Old English sceard, which means chipped or broken, much like a shard is. That’s from the Proto Germanic skardaz, which is from sker-. A surprisingly sensible origin. Shards are a cut piece of something!
 
Sharp comes from the Old English scearp, which just means sharp, big surprise. It’s from the Proto Germanic skarpaz, meaning it was the same word as sharp’s origin, but still with a P in place of the D. And that of course is from sker-, so we still aren’t making any huge leaps here.
 
Then there’s share, which… yeah, really. Share. It comes from the Middle English share and Old English scaeru, a division, then before that the Proto Germanic skeraz, and that’s from sker-. A share is a cut of something. I can’t believe this makes sense.
 
Shore showed up in the fourteenth century. It’s got a few possible origins, like the Old English scora/sceor-, which was part of place names, the Middle Low German schor, shore or coast, and the Middle Dutch scorre, land washed by sea. All are thought to be from the Proto Germanic skur-o-, cut, which is from sker-, though I don’t see the leap from cut to washed by the sea. Still, this is etymology, and you know how backwards it can be.
 
Nex, shear, like you shear sheep, so I can pretty much guess how this will go (spoiler: like all of the above words). It’s from the Middle English sheren, from the Old English scieran, to cut. That’s from the Proto Germanic skero-, to cut, from sker-. Yep, that’s what I thought.
 
But there’s also sheer, which has more varied meanings—thin (the mid sixteenth century), absolute or utter (the late sixteenth century), steep like a cliff (nineteenth century). And before all that, it showed up in the thirteenth century meaning free from guilt—the day before Good Friday, as in today, is actually called, not kidding, Sheer Thursday!!! Why such varied meanings? It’s a bit complicated, but sheer was scir in Old English and meant bright, pure, or translucent—so thin and absolute make sense, though steep not so much. Anyway, it’s from the Proto Germanic skeran, which is from sker-. This was definitely the weirdest one.
 
Happy Sheer Thursday, everyone.
 
Sources
Online Etymology Dictionary
University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center
University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language
University of Texas at Arlington
Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English
Old English-English Dictionary
In Depth Germanic Language Studies
History Of The Dutch Language