cirrus

From Latin cirrus (“curl”).

A sky filled with cirrus clouds

• IPA^(key): /ˈsɪɹəs/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪɹəs

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.
   • 1952, Ernest Hemingway, The old man and the sea, Harper Perennial classics, published 2014, page 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.

   • 1996, David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest […], Boston, Mass., New York, N.Y.: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN, page 15:

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

• cirral

Learned borrowing from Latin cirrus. Doublet of cerro.

• IPA^(key): (Central, Balearic, Valencian) [ˈsi.rus]

cirrus m (invariable)

1. cirrus (cloud)

• “cirrus” in Diccionari de la llengua catalana, segona edició, Institut d’Estudis Catalans.
• “cirrus”, in Gran Diccionari de la Llengua Catalana, Grup Enciclopèdia Catalana, 2024
• “cirrus” in Diccionari normatiu valencià, Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua.
• “cirrus” in Diccionari català-valencià-balear, Antoni Maria Alcover and Francesc de Borja Moll, 1962.

From New Latin cirrus.

• IPA^(key): /ˈsirːus/, [ˈs̠irːus̠]
• Syllabification^(key): cir‧rus

cirrus

1. cirrus (type of cloud)

• cirruspilvi
• untuvapilvi

• “cirrus”, in Kielitoimiston sanakirja [Dictionary of Contemporary Finnish]‎ (in Finnish) (online dictionary, continuously updated), Kotimaisten kielten keskuksen verkkojulkaisuja 35, Helsinki: Kotimaisten kielten tutkimuskeskus (Institute for the Languages of Finland), 2004–, retrieved 2023-07-02

The origin is unknown. There are no definitive cognates in other Indo-European languages. Compare Proto-Germanic *hērą (“hair”).

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ˈkir.rus/, [ˈkɪrːʊs̠]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈt͡ʃir.rus/, [ˈt͡ʃirːus]

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

Second-declension noun.

• Catalan: cerro
• Galician: cerro
• Italian: cirro
• Portuguese: cerro
• Spanish: cerro

• “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 with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 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

Borrowed from Latin cirrus (“curl”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈt͡sir.rus/

• Audio

  (file)

• Rhymes: -irrus
• Syllabification: cir‧rus

cirrus m animal

1. (meteorology) cirrus (a type of cloud)

   Synonym: chmura pierzasta

• cirrus in Wielki słownik języka polskiego, Instytut Języka Polskiego PAN
• cirrus in Polish dictionaries at PWN