Shear, after-, The. The second crop of grass. Called in the Midland Counties “the eddish,” and also the “latter-math,” or “after-math.”
Sheets’-axe, A. An oak apple. See chap. xvi. [p. 183].
Shelf, A. A bank of sand or pebbles, or shallow in a river, or even the ford itself. Milton uses the word in Comus:—
“On the tawny sands and shelves.”
Hence we got the adjective “shelvy,” also in common use, and employed by Falstaffe—“The shore was shelvy and shallow” (The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act iii., sc. 5). It is this latter word, which Mr. Halliwell and Mr. Wright must mean instead of “shelly,” and which they define as “an ait in a river.” The word is probably from the same Scandinavian root as shoal.
Shim. Lean. “He’s a shim fellow,” that is, thin. It is used, I see from Mr. Cooper’s glossary, for a shadow, in the western division of Sussex; and I think I have somewhere met with it in the sense of a ghost.
Shoak, Shock, Shuck, Off, To. To break off short. Thus gravel is said to shock off at any particular stratum, or “list,” or “scale,” as it would be called. See [the following word].
Shock, A. Not applied merely to corn, but to anything else. “A shock of sand” means a line or band of sand, called also a “list,” or “lissen,” or “bond,” or “scale,” and sometimes “drive:” which last, however, has a more particular reference to the direction of the stratum.
Size. Thickness, consistency. “The size of the gruel” means its consistency.
Skimmer-Cake, A. A small pudding made up from the remnants of another, and cooked upon a “skimmer,” the dish with which the milk is skimmed. Nearly equivalent to the “girdle-cake,” north of England.