A sheaf is a bundle of grain stalks, such as wheat or barley, tied together after harvest. Picture a farmer's field in late summer: workers cut the tall grain plants and gather them into bundles, binding each sheaf with twine or a twist of straw itself. Before modern farming machines, creating sheaves was essential work. Farmers would stand the sheaves upright in groups called shocks to dry in the sun, then load them onto wagons for storage in barns.

You might see sheaves in paintings of harvest time or read about them in historical novels. In some places, people still make corn sheaves or wheat sheaves as decorations for autumn festivals.

The word also describes any similar bundle of long, thin objects bound together. A sheaf of papers means a stack of loose pages held together, usually with a clip or rubber band. A sheaf of arrows describes multiple arrows bundled as one unit. The plural is sheaves, pronounced like “sheevz.” When something comes in sheaves, it arrives in organized bundles rather than scattered everywhere, just like those original grain stalks gathered neatly from the field.