a gentle breath of wind; a not-so-gentle breath of wind. This word highlights one of the difficulties that lexicographers face. We define words according to the way people use them. Taking as many quotations as possible, we look carefully at all the ways words are used and we try to deduce what people understand by them. This is not always straightforward. Words may have more than one meaning and meanings change over the years.
The sense of a caressing zephyr is evident in the words of Thomas Manson in Humours of a Peat Commission (1894): A gentle “pir” of wind to keep the heat from becoming oppressive. However, this contrasting quotation from the Fife Herald of August 1831 seems to suggest a less welcome current of air: And were they [corn fields] to be visited with a pirr of wind … the result would be seriously felt. Another agriculture voice from the Buchan Observer (November 1954) confirms a stronger November blast: A gey pirrie o’ win’ an flans o’ shooers skilpin roon wir lugs [our ears] at ’e plooin [ploughing].
The Shetland writer, J. J. Haldane Burgess provides an emotive, figurative usage in his 1891 collection of poems, Rasmie’s Büddie:
As da pirr o memry, blaain [blowing],
Frae mi een [eyes] da skub [mist] aa clears.