cirrus
Pronunciation
  • IPA: /ˈsɪɹəs/
Noun

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.
    • 1996, David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest, Abacus 2013, p. 15:
      The blue sky is glossy and fat with heat, a few thin cirri sheared to blown strands like hair at the rims.
    • 1952, Ernest Hemingway, The old man and the sea, Harper Perennial classics, 2014, p. 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.
Translations Translations


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