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  1. chirr love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. A harsh trilling sound, such as that made by crickets.
  2. v. To make a harsh trilling sound.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. To murmur or coo as a pigeon.
  2. To utter a tremulous, rattling sound; make a shrill jarring noise, such as that made by the cricket or cicada; chirp.
  3. n. A monotonous, sharp, stridulous sound such as that made by the cricket or cicada.

Wiktionary

  1. v. intransitive To make a prolonged trilling sound of an insect (e.g. a grasshopper, a cicada).
  2. n. The trilled sound made by an insect.

WordNet 3.0

  1. v. make a vibrant noise, of grasshoppers or cicadas

Etymologies

  1. Imitative (Wiktionary)
  2. Imitative. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

  • “Like a bad dream they faded away and the soothing chirr of the crickets returned and once again she slept.”

    Simon & Schuster: Red Knife

  • “Birdehs cum and eet deh seeds, kittehs watch frum windoze and chirr and make deh but wiggle ub doom at dem.”

    I will wait - Lolcats 'n' Funny Pictures of Cats - I Can Has Cheezburger?

  • “In the evening when the dogs howl and the crickets chirr, and the huge moon hoists above the hills, and in Argostoli the searchlights search for false alarms, I take my sweet Antonia.”

    Captain Corelli's Mandolin

  • “She could hear the hiss of the ventilators, the faint, distant hum of the power conduits, and the soft chirr and beep as the computer finished the last complex set of calculations and presented its results.”

    Simon & Schuster: Proud Helios

  • “They are wonderful and will always be associated in my mind with summer things-corn on the cob, watermelon, the nighttime chirr of crickets, the sound of my parents 'neighbor Mr. Piper arriving home late from one of his lodge meetings, parking his car with the aid of his garbage cans, then serenading Mr.. Piper with two choruses of "Rose of Seville" before settling down for a nap on the lawn.”

    I'm A Stranger Here Myself

  • “The boy's piping, the wind in the lyre, and the chirr of crickets, all mingled with it; it was like the voice of the mountain.”

    The Bull From The Sea

  • “The soldier stood erect, gray-faced and immovable, his eyes fixed, his teeth set, his hand gripping the pike, till the insects, reassured, began to chirr close about him.”

    The Yoke A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt

  • “They have peculiar notes like a clear whistle, and a "_chirr, chirr! _" which they utter when flying.”

    Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls

  • “A monotonous locust was chirr-chirr-chirring from a nearby cottonwood ... and in the long hedge of Osage oranges moaned wood doves ....”

    Tramping on Life

  • “Not at all," replied the little man, in a voice as dry and crisp as the chirr of a grasshopper.”

    The Children's Book of Christmas Stories

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hypernyms (4)

Words that are more generic or abstract

  1. emit
  1. let out
  1. let loose
  1. utter

same context (8)

Words that are found in similar contexts

  1. dockworkers
  1. susurration
  1. slumbrous
  1. be?'
  1. gime
  1. lime-juice
  1. come
  1. Mecca

reverse dictionary (2)

Words that contain this word in their definition

  1. churr
  1. stridulate

tags (1)

Free-form, user-generated categorization

  1. ccvcc

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Lists

These user-created lists contain the word ‘chirr’.

Comments

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  • yarb Not the faintest chirring of a cricket broke the silence. The bees were asleep. In the grasses, in the trees, deep in the calix of punka flower and magnolia bloom, the gnats, the caterpillars, the beetles, all the microscopic, multitudinous life of the daytime drowsed and dozed.

    - Frank Norris, The Octopus, bk 2, ch. 3 Aug 26, 2008

  • slumry Nice! Jul 11, 2007

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‘chirr’ has been looked up 1851 times, loved by 1 person, added to 11 lists, commented on 2 times, and has a Scrabble score of 10.