shear wall

a wall or section of a wall that is designed to resist lateral forces (primarily wind and earthquake loads) in the structure of a building. A shear wall is essentially a brace acting in the plane or parallel to the plane of a wall.
In housing construction a shear wall is typically constructed with wood or metal stud walls covered with panel product such as plywood, orieneted strand board, or gypsum wall board. The engineer specifies, or the building code may prescibe, the specific fastener type, size and spacing. Each end of the shear wall is anchored down to the foundation or a structural element below.
The building code requires that buildings be braced with shear walls to minimize damage based on the history of earthquake and wind damage in a given geographic area.
Alternate spellings or misspellings: shearwall, sheerwall