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Scottish National Dictionary (1700–)

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

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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