Digital ACT Reading Practice Question #1588

As it is used in the passage, the word 'shear' most nearly means: Passage Excerpt (Literary Narrative): On the pitching deck of the salvage ship, Captain Donald watched his young technician, Sam, manipulate the joysticks of the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) two thousand feet below. On the console monitors, the high-definition floodlights illuminated the barnacle-encrusted hull of the sunken freighter. Donald had spent thirty years diving in heavy brass helmets, feeling the crushing pressure of the sea against his chest, navigating murky currents by the touch of his gloved palms. To Sam, the ocean was a video game, rendered in pixels and telemetry overlays. Yet when a sudden rip current caught the ROV, threatening to shear its umbilical fiber-optic tether against a sharp steel crane, Donald reached over Sam's shoulder and tapped the rudder throttle with instinctual precision. 'The current doesn't push the screen, Sam,' Donald murmured. 'It pushes the hull.'