skirl
Americanverb (used without object)
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skirls,
present (3rd person singular)
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skirled,
past participle, past
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skirling
present participle
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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:
Belief swirled like the skirl of the bagpipes.
From BBC ● Nov. 8, 2025
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
"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 got to 14-year-old Paul-Luc Parks when he was 7.
From Washington Times ● Jan. 31, 2017
Two Glover men began a spinning skirl on bladder and woodharp.
From "A Clash of Kings" by George R.R. Martin
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
He heard our skirls," Birse said, "but couldna grip the words ony mair than we could hear the earl.
From The Little Minister by J. M. (James Matthew) Barrie
It went on and on and on, never faltering, never pausing, in soft trills and gay roulades, shrill skirls or flute-like warblings, a continuous outpour, for I don't know how many minutes.
From The Lady Paramount by Henry Harland
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 George Oliver Smith
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 C. J. (Clarence James) Dennis
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
After he was led to the lockup, a band of bagpipers skirled round the building playing a composition in his honor, The Unjust Incarceration.
From Time Magazine Archive
A piper skirled a march for the Highlanders in the British front line.
From Time Magazine Archive
“Last dance!” someone called, and the music skirled up into something stately and slow and final.
From "The Graveyard Book" by Neil Gaiman
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.
