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Examples

  • An enormous raccoon, tranquilly munching a smoked trout, dropped its prey at sight of her, dashed between her legs, and made off like a fat banker in flight from creditors, making loud birring noises of alarm.

    A Breath of Snow and Ashes Gabaldon, Diana 2005

  • What secret does he bring me under those misty wings, -- that busy birring sound, like Neighbor Clark's spinning-wheel?

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 32, June, 1860 Various

  • She did not even shiver when the front door of the basement closed, and she heard the sonorous birring of the motor, drowning the giddy voices of the servants, grow fainter and fainter until it finally ceased altogether.

    Scottish Ghost Stories Elliott O'Donnell 1918

  • Rejoice, ye birring paitricks a '; [whirring partridges]

    Robert Burns How To Know Him William Allan Neilson 1907

  • Now, how sorry we feel for those other globe trotters on the launch, birring along behind a hot, bubbling, puffing, steam kettle -- and so crowded, and in this heat too, whilst we extend at our ease in a white and sky-blue boat, with pink cushions, and dreamily listen to the silky frou frou of the southern sea.

    From Edinburgh to India & Burmah 1900

  • The milk-cows were nipping the clovery parks, and chewing their cuds at their leisure; -- the wild partridges whidding about in pairs, or birring their wings with fright over the hedges; -- and the blue-bonneted ploughmen on the road cracking their whips in wantonness, and whistling along amid the clean straw in their carts.

    The Life of Mansie Wauch Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself David Macbeth Moir 1824

  • The milk-cows were nipping the clovery parks, and chewing their cuds at their leisure; -- the wild partridges whidding about in pairs, or birring their wings with fright over the hedges; -- and the blue-bonneted ploughmen on the road cracking their whips in wantonness, and whistling along amid the clean straw in their carts.

    The Life of Mansie Wauch tailor in Dalkeith David Macbeth Moir 1824

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