FRATERNAL FILMS

29th January 2012

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BIRR

birr \bur, noun:

1. A whirring sound.
2. Emphasis in statement, speech, etc.
3. A whirring sound.

verb:
1. To move with or make a whirring sound.

She pursed her lips and, expertly, imitated the red-winged blackbird’s call: not the liquid piping of the wood thrush, which dipped down into the dry tcch tchh tchh of the cricket’s birr and up again in delirious, sobbing trills…
— Donna Tartt, The Little Friend: A Novel

I turn to the woman. There’s a wheezing birr coming from her own bleached-out face.
— Irvine Welsh, Filth

Birr is derived from the Icelandic word byrr meaning “favorable wind.”