shirl

See also: Shirl

English

Etymology 1

Noun

shirl (countable and uncountable, plural shirls)

1. (mineralogy) Archaic form of schorl.

Etymology 2

Etymology

Apparently related to German dialectal schurren, to slide upon ice.

Verb

shirl (third-person singular simple present shirls, present participle shirling, simple past and past participle shirled)

1. (UK, dialect, intransitive) (Can we verify⁽⁺⁾ this sense?)To slide.

   Lacking skates, she shirled across the frozen river to the far bank.

   • 1856 [1826], Robert Southey, edited by John Wood Warter, Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, volume III, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, Letter of January 25, 1826, page 525:

     My girls are good shirlers—an exercise you have not heard of in the South. Shirling is neither sliding nor skating, but a sort of intermediate motion, performed in the common clogs of this country, which have irons on them like horse-shoes.

   • 1898 May 17, “Lakeland Words”, in Penrith Observer:

     Ther's a grand shirl on t' pond.

References

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “shirl”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)