shearing vs cutting off

shearing and cutting off both are nouns.

Word	Noun	Adjective	Verb	Adverb
shearing	Yes	No	No	No
cutting off	Yes	No	No	No

As nouns, cutting off is a hypernym of shearing; that is, cutting off is a word with a broader meaning than shearing:

Other hypernyms of shearing include cut, cutting.

shearing (noun)	cutting off (noun)
removing by cutting off or clipping	the act of shortening something by chopping off the ends
	the act of cutting something off