cirrus

From Latin cirrus (“curl”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈsɪɹəs/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Audio (General American):

  (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, typically composed of thin, delicate, white filaments, wisps, or narrow bands.
   • 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.

Learned borrowing from Latin cirrus. Doublet of cerro.

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

cirrus m (invariable)

1. (botany) cirrus, tendril

   Synonym: circell

2. (zoology) cirrus (tendril-like appendage)
3. (meteorology) cirrus (cloud)

• “cirrus”, in Diccionari de la llengua catalana [Dictionary of the Catalan Language] (in Catalan), second edition, Institute of Catalan Studies [Catalan: Institut d'Estudis Catalans], April 2007
• “cirrus”, in Gran Diccionari de la Llengua Catalana, Grup Enciclopèdia Catalana, 2025
• “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]
• Rhymes: -irːus
• Syllabification^(key): cir‧rus
• Hyphenation^(key): cir‧rus

cirrus

1. cirrus (type of cloud)

• cirruspilvi
• untuvapilvi

• “cirrus”, in Kielitoimiston sanakirja [Dictionary of Contemporary Finnish]‎^[1] (in Finnish) (online dictionary, continuously updated), Kotimaisten kielten keskuksen verkkojulkaisuja 35, Helsinki: Kotimaisten kielten tutkimuskeskus (Institute for the Languages of Finland), 2004–, retrieved 2 July 2023

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

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈkɪr.rʊs]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈt͡ʃir.rus]

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

Learned borrowing from Latin cirrus.

• IPA^(key): /ˈt͡sir.rus/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Rhymes: -irrus
• Syllabification: cir‧rus

cirrus m animal

1. (meteorology) cirrus (type of cloud)

   Synonym: chmura pierzasta

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