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Scottish National Dictionary (1700–)

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First published 1976 (SND Vol. X).
This entry has not been updated since then but may contain minor corrections and revisions.

Quotation dates: 1706, 1832-1936

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WIRL, n. Also wirle, wirral, wurl, and met. forms, phs. arising from shift of stress, wroul, wraul, and vocalised variants wrow, ne.Sc. vrow. Dim. wirlie (Cld. 1825 Jam.), wurly. Reduplic. form wirly-warly. A puny ill-developed person, animal or plant, a stunted or deformed creature, a dwarf (Sc. 1808 Jam.; Per., Fif. (wraul), Cld. (wurl) 1825 Jam.; Per. 1909 Scotsman (10 May); Abd. 1921 T.S.D.C., vrow; Fif. 1974), also used jocularly of a mischievous child, a young scamp (Slk. 1947). Also attrib. Comb. wirle-faced, having a shrunken, sharp-featured or twisted face.Sc. 1706 Short Survey Married Life 12:
An Old, Wilk-Mou'd, Wirle-faced Nipped Deformed Creature.Edb. 1832 Whistle-Binkie 87:
The biting frost, though snell an' surly, Is scouted by thee, thou hardy wurly.Edb. 1856 J. Ballantine Poems 178:
Sour as a sourack, and round as a neep, A queer wirly warly is our Boo Peep.Ags. 1893 F. Mackenzie Cruisie Sk. vi.:
Thae cabbage are most awfu' warty . . . they are the weariest wrows ever I saw.Fif. 1898 S. Tytler Mrs Carmichael's Goddesses xvii.:
A 'shilpet wurl' little creature.Sc. 1935 D. Rorie Lum Hat 63:
A limmer's glamourie dims an' dees As ye're hushin' her wirral's cry.

Adj. wirlie, wurlie, -y, puny, stunted, undersized, undeveloped (Fif., Lth. 1825 Jam.); of persons: wrinkled, with wizened features (Lnk. Ib.), sallow, dark-complexioned (Lnk. 1822 G. R. Kinloch MS.); of wood: rough, gnarled, knotted (Sc. 1825 Jam.).Sc. 1873 D. M. Ogilvy Willie Wabster 16:
The widow is nae fag-ma-fuff, Nae wudscud, wurlie, woslie wuff.Sc. 1936 J. G. Horne Floor o' Ling 63:
Green, wurly aipples straw The gress.

[Not in O.Sc. Jam.'s suggestion that the word is a reduced form of Eng. werewolf, orig. a half-human, half-wolf creature, which in Sc. came to be used in the above sense (see Warwoof) is plausible, the form developing esp. from the vocalisation of v in the pl. warwolves. A variant from the sing. would appear to be Wurf. The word in its orig. meaning became obs., till its modern revival in folk-lore study, in Eng. in the 17th c. but persisted in Sc. The phonology suggests that the stress-accent shifted to the final syllable. For cogn. forms cf. Fris. wǣrul, warule, Norw. varulv, North. Fr. dial. warou, a squalid wretch. There may have also been some formal and semantic influence from Wirlin(g).]

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"Wirl n.". Dictionary of the Scots Language. 2004. Scottish Language Dictionaries Ltd. Accessed 4 Apr 2026 <http://www.dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/wirl_n>

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