This is is an essential vocabulary item for describing Scottish weather at all seasons. The soft
smirr of summer can be quite pleasurable, almost caressing. Chris Dolan seems to reflect this in
Poor Angels (1995): “Not a sound, save the viola darkness and a smir of rain like a mother’s
hush”. In H. Ainslie’s Pilgrimage (1822), the adjective ‘sma’ perfectly captures the nature of fine
precipitation borne in on a gentle current of air: “There was a fine pirl out frae the Wast, wi’ a
sma’ smurr o’ rain”. Neil Munro also writes of warm Atlantic wet in Lost Pibroch (1896): “A
thin smirr of warm rains fell on the glen like smoke”. His apt simile explains why smirr is
occasionally used in the sense of ‘smoke’ as in Marion Campbell’s The Dark Twin (1973): “He
was crouched over a little fire of smoky twigs, holding his hands over it and staring through the
smir”. Alan Sharp identifies both the emotiveness and the wetness of it in A Green Tree in
Gedde (1965): “When she got out it was starting to rain, a soft smirr. ... The rain spun down all
around her, soundless, small as small, a mood of rain falling gently yet relentlessly, wetting
everywhere!” Few forms of weather are as pervasive as smirring rain. It defies umbrellas,
creeping damply beneath them. Ian Rankin’s description in Black & Blue (1997) hits the nail on
the head: “it wasn’t real rain, it was smirr, a fine spray-mist which drenched you before you
knew it. It was blowing in from the west, moisture straight from the Atlantic Ocean”. An
interesting extension of its use comes from Lewis Coutts’ Lyrics, Ballads and Satires
(1926): “Smirrin ice hid stoppt the mill”. How much more descriptive of rime than the ‘freezing
fog’ of weather reports!

Scots Word of the Week is written by Chris Robinson of Scottish Language Dictionaries.

This week's Word is spoken by Avril Nicol.