tirl
Definitions
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- verb To quiver; vibrate; thrill; hence, to change or veer about, as the wind.
- verb To produce a rattling or whirring; make a clatter, as by shaking or twirling something.
- verb To twirl; whirl or twist.
- verb To strip or pluck off quickly.
- verb To strip of something; uncover; unroof; divest, as of covering or raiment.
- noun A twirl or whirl; a vibration, or something vibrating or whirling.
- noun A turn; a try.
- noun A substitute for a trundle-wheel or lantern-wheel in a mill.
Examples
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Ah, Gwendolyn, while it may be true that "everyday existence" is the tirl of dull, repetitive activities that you infer, it's just one layer of a many-layered cake; and if it seems an exercise in pointless mediocrity, maybe that's only because most who live it are too narrowly focused to perceive its underlying kaleidoscopic density.
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So perhaps thought our couple; but their thoughts belied them, for just again, as the dawn broke over the tops of the high houses, the well-known tirl was heard at the door.
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One morning when they were in bed -- for even yet, while they concealed their thoughts from each other, and the name of Jenny Dodds was a condemned word in their vocabulary, even as the sacred name among the Romans, they had evinced no spoken enmity to each other -- they heard a tirl at the door.
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Were we to go near these lads of the laird's belt, your letter would do you little good, and my pack would do me muckle black ill; they would tirl every steek of claithes from our back, fling us into a moss-hag with a stone at our heels, naked as the hour that brought us into this cumbered and sinful world, and neither Murray nor any other man ever the wiser.
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A friend (D. D., Esq., Edinburgh) tells me of a cat his family had in the country, that used regularly to "_tirl at the pin_" of the back door when it wished to get in to the house.
Note
The word 'tirl' is related to 'twirl' and 'thirl' (to vibrate).
