cirrus

Etymology

From Latin cirrus (“curl”).

A sky filled with cirrus clouds

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈsɪɹəs/
• Rhymes: -ɪrəs

Noun

cirrus (plural cirri)

1. (botany) A tendril.
2. (zoology) A thin tendril-like appendage.
3. (meteorology) A principal high-level cloud type characterised by white, delicate filaments or wisps, of white (or mostly white) patches, or of narrow bands, found at an altitude of above 7000 metres.
   • 1996, David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest, Abacus 2013, p. 15:

     The blue sky is glossy and fat with heat, a few thin cirri sheared to blown strands like hair at the rims.

   • 1952, Ernest Hemingway, The old man and the sea, Harper Perennial classics, 2014, p. 282:

     He looked at the sky and saw the white cumulus built like friendly piles of ice cream and high above where the thin feathers of the cirrus against the high September sky.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈsirːus/
• Hyphenation: cir‧rus

Noun

cirrus

1. cirrus (type of cloud)

Etymology

The origin is unknown. There are no definitive cognates in other Indo-European languages.

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ˈkir.rus/, [ˈkɪr.rʊs]

Noun

cirrus m (genitive cirrī); second declension

1. a curl
2. the fringe of clothes
3. the tentacle of an octopus
4. the mane, especially the forelock, of a horse

References

• cirrus in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• cirrus in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• cirrus in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition, 1883–1887)
• cirrus in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898) Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
• cirrus in William Smith et al., editor (1890) A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin