Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • transitive verb To gather (cloth) into decorative rows by parallel stitching.
  • transitive verb To cook (unshelled eggs) by baking until set.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • 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.
  • noun A puckering or fulling produced in a fabric by means of parallel gathering-threads.
  • noun One of the threads of india-rubber woven into cloth or ribbon to make it elastic.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (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, and gauging.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb US (sewing) To make gathers in textiles by drawing together parallel threads.
  • verb US, transitive To bake (a raw egg removed from its shell) in a baking dish.
  • noun sewing A shirring.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb bake (eggs) in their shells until they are set

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Origin unknown.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Unknown.

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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.

    Kook Peter Heller 2010

  • Then we wouldn't go through a shirr charade of having frankly an address as confusing as the one that Mitt Romney gave today.

    CNN Transcript Dec 6, 2007 2007

  • The veil was secured to the hood by a simple shirr string of elastic.

    The Motor Girls Margaret Penrose

  • 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 Way of the Wind Zoe Anderson Norris

  • _Shirred Eggs. _ -- To shirr an egg break it into a saucer or any small dish that has been well greased.

    Health on the Farm A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene 1896

  • 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.

    The Prince of India — Volume 01 Lewis Wallace 1866

  • Here have I heard all their chat just now, and the white whale -- shirr! shirr!

    Moby Dick: or, the White Whale Herman Melville 1855

  • Here have I heard all their chat just now, and the white whale -- shirr! shirr!

    Moby Dick, or, the whale Herman Melville 1855

  • Here have I heard all their chat just now, and the white whale -- shirr! shirr!

    Moby-Dick, or, The Whale 1851

  • This gives you a resource to run to if you don't know how to shirr or create a button hole.

    WN.com - Articles related to M&S selling extra-big school uniforms for obese children 2010

Comments

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  • Plath citations: see note at ringdove.

    April 14, 2008

  • To gather (cloth) into decorative rows by parallel stitching

    November 10, 2009

  • Shirrly you can't be serious?

    November 10, 2009

  • How did a egg preparation process become associated with stitching?

    November 10, 2009