Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To gather (cloth) into decorative rows by parallel stitching.
- v. To cook (unshelled eggs) by baking until set.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To pucker or draw up (a fabric or a part of a fabric) by means of parallel gathering-threads: as, to shirr an apron.
- In cookery, to poach (eggs) in cream instead of water.
- n. A puckering or fulling produced in a fabric by means of parallel gathering-threads.
- n. One of the threads of india-rubber woven into cloth or ribbon to make it elastic.
Wiktionary
- v. US (sewing) To make gathers in textiles by drawing together parallel threads.
- v. US, transitive To bake (a raw egg removed from its shell) in a baking dish.
- n. sewing A shirring.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Sewing) A series of close parallel runnings which are drawn up so as to make the material between them set full by gatherings; -- called also
shirring , andgauging .
WordNet 3.0
- v. bake (eggs) in their shells until they are set
Etymologies
- Unknown. (Wiktionary)
- Origin unknown. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“We pulled into the parking lot with a shirr of tires over sand, cut the engine, and while the engine ticked and the offshore breeze rattled the palms behind us, we drank our coffee, looked through the windshield at the beach, and tried to get stoked.”
“Then we wouldn't go through a shirr charade of having frankly an address as confusing as the one that Mitt Romney gave today.”
“The asylums, such as they were, were filled with those whose minds in the ghastly loneliness of the desert had been torn and turned and twisted by the incessant whirl and shirr and swish and force of the pitiless winds.”
“The veil was secured to the hood by a simple shirr string of elastic.”
“_Shirred Eggs. _ -- To shirr an egg break it into a saucer or any small dish that has been well greased.”
“The trees on the hills behind the Castle were bending and bowing; and not merely around the boat, but far as could be seen the surface of the ancient channel was a-shirr and a-shatter under beating of advance gusts.”
“Here have I heard all their chat just now, and the white whale -- shirr! shirr!”
“This gives you a resource to run to if you don't know how to shirr or create a button hole.”
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“Plus Timmy already has the stuff to fight his depression issues. or Harden, or Dook-shirr-err-err.”
“It's on full display in this poem, where the early morning poet both hears and observes: antennae'd and furred all sing all shirr all rub and buzz and fling their call to You in song-light as the mist still clings”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘shirr’.
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Quaintnesses
For those who wish no words were ever forgotten
opprobrium, tedium, encomium, odium, ire, enmity, beguile, wile, brazen, popinjay, squit, hoity-toity and 1161 more...
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curligirli0's Words
crapulous, swish, shiatsu, zen, xenoglossy, nincompoop, loquacious, pianissimo, onomatopoeia, imperturbable, silky, hosanas and 379 more...
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FTL
Words listed first by me that don't belong in any other list.
licit, precis, mnemosyne, badinage, mariposa, lepidoptera, coruscation, poignant, meme, oxymoron, xenophobia, asterism and 128 more...
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words
diplopic, dolorous, farrago, surety, scuttlebutt, Arabesque, infarct, neurasthenia, lambent, expurge, univocal, simper and 395 more...
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learning
A list of words whose meanings I am learning, either because a) I don't know the meaning b) I know the meaning, but could stand to better appreciate certain inflections or secondary meanings or c) ...
louche, educe, loam, cob, sclerotic, palliate, axial, syndicalist, ecumenical, sally, fatuous, parvenu and 1387 more...
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favorite words
sawbones, grackle, celadon, brio, loam, trull, mint, saliva, serape, frisson, impasto, reek and 557 more...
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A Peckerwick of Fiffoldry
fogray, whalesong, solregn, shoecabbage, thorn-bush, thistledown, pomander, thornbush, dreamy duskywing, sedge, unbunting-like, quilp and 119 more...
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.pages
tamerlane, rickett, bastan, barnum, byssus, carys, lyris, vidler, morphos, leafwing, phaon, scudder and 238 more...
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manyfold
kirigami, chohanagata, kusudama, origami, polyptych, scapulet, bromeliaceae, monopodial, crinkle, peplos, plicate, accordion and 60 more...
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the blood jet is poetry
A selection of frequent or favourite words from Sylvia Plath's Collected Poems, as part of my bid to read them all. Quotes can be found on each citation page.
whiteness, zen, dryad, rook, tulip, kindness, troublous, portico, prospect, blight, havoc, millrace and 62 more...
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dirtmusic's list
Obsessive words
trundle, forzando, graben, caterwaul, chapparral, dauerlauf, diadem, doloroso, dithyramb, dyslalia, desinence, lucerne and 18 more...
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Pleats
There's more than one way to pleat a cat.
plait, plicature, plication, crinkle, crease, rimple, crimp, ruche, ruck, goffer, fanfold, Wateau and 18 more...
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Gallimaufry
...words to be reassigned as time allows.
vade, viduity, surd, thropple, horary, sorites, ancile, roscid, spraints, birl, marmite, voxel and 69 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for shirr.
fbharjo How did a egg preparation process become associated with stitching? Nov 10, 2009
bilby Shirrly you can't be serious? Nov 10, 2009
fbharjo To gather (cloth) into decorative rows by parallel stitching Nov 10, 2009
ofravens Plath citations: see note at ringdove. Apr 14, 2008