skirl
Americanverb (used without object)
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to play the bagpipe.
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Scot. and North England. to shriek.
noun
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the sound of a bagpipe.
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Scot. and North England. any shrill sound.
verb
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dialect (esp of bagpipes) to emit a shrill sound
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to play the bagpipes
noun
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the sound of bagpipes
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a shrill sound
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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skirlsimple
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skirlssimple
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have skirledperfect
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has skirledperfect
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am skirlingprogressive
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are skirlingprogressive
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is skirlingprogressive
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have been skirlingperfect progressive
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has been skirlingperfect progressive
Past
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skirledsimple
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had skirledperfect
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was skirlingprogressive
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were skirlingprogressive
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had been skirlingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of skirl
1350–1400; Middle English scirlen, skrillen (v.), perhaps < Scandinavian; compare Norwegian skrella boom, crash
Vocabulary lists containing skirl
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Bringing Scotland to the Pacific Northwest for over 75 years through the skirl o’ the Pipes and Drums, the beauty of Highland Dancing, the brawn of Scottish athletics, and the sharing of clan history!
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 26, 2024
Thousands of Scotland fans are in London ahead of their Euro 2020 match with England - but the skirl of the bagpipes has largely been drowned out by a 1970s disco classic.
From BBC ● Jun. 18, 2021
"It had all the strange, wild, emotional force of the skirl of a bagpipe," wrote Herbert Warren Wind.
From Golf Digest ● Apr. 13, 2020
The skirl also got to Lily Cunningham, a pixie of a 13-year-old who stood beside the evening’s emcee, Arthur McAra, clutching her three-quarter-sized bagpipe.
From Washington Times ● Jan. 31, 2017
Voices would skirl up in the darkness: one person singing a lullaby, then another person, until everyone was asleep.
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
Its unnerving drones and belligerent skirls have been known to stir men's blood, their brains and, according to Shakespeare, their bladders.*
From Time Magazine Archive
There was a layer of blue smoke above their heads that broke into skirls as various individuals left one group to join another.
From The Fourth R by Smith, George Oliver
“How could I sit still, Gavin, and the town full o’ the skirls of women and bairns?
From The Little Minister by Barrie, J. M. (James Matthew)
And the whispering grass on the gay green hills And every cricket that skirls and shrills, And every moonbeam, gleaming white, All know the Glugs quite well by sight.
From The Glugs of Gosh by Dennis, C. J. (Clarence James)
"But she threeps to keep on a black fause-face, and skirls if we offer to take it away."
From The Surgeon's Daughter by Scott, Walter, Sir
Then the bagpipes skirled, and the coffin was loaded into the hearse and borne away for a private burial.
From New York Times ● Nov. 3, 2014
A bagpiper skirled "Amazing Grace," wreaths were laid and a bugler played "Taps."
From Reuters ● Jun. 6, 2014
Bands played, pipers skirled and people sang old songs and the new hits.
From Time Magazine Archive
Outside the town hall of Hamilton, a Lowlands town of 47,341, the bagpipes skirled We Shall Overcome.
From Time Magazine Archive
Now the darkness was closing in on his family; now the evil music filled the night, hung over the mangroves, skirled in the wave beat.
From "The Pearl" by John Steinbeck
Two minutes later John McGinn smashed a shot on to the Chelsea bar from 30 yards, the rebound sending the ball skirling up a similar distance into the London sky.
From The Guardian ● Dec. 28, 2020
He turned Ms. Nicks’s “Gold Dust Woman” into a darker incantation before taking a long, skirling, keening solo in his own “I’m So Afraid”; “Tusk” was a cry of despair, not a novelty.
From New York Times ● Oct. 7, 2014
Distinct from the lilting singsong of the South, a Northern Irish accent is my favorite in the U.K.: hard, skirling, and sour, with a compulsively upward, interrogative lift at the end of the sentence.
From Newsweek ● Jul. 11, 2011
But there is still something magnificent – and magnificently out-of-kilter – about this great skirling tide of productivity.
From The Guardian ● Jun. 23, 2010
Another cliff-ghast and then a third fell in the stream or on the rocks nearby, stark dead; and then the rest fled, skirling and chittering into the dark toward the north.
From "The Subtle Knife" by Philip Pullman
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
