Now Sc. Forms: 6 whirrye, -ie, 7 whurry, wherry, 7, 9 Sc. whirry. [? f. WHIRR + -Y, after hurry.]
1. trans. To carry or drive swiftly; to hurry along. Also fig.
1582. Stanyhurst, Æneis, III. (Arb.), 89. Hoyse me hence … too sum oother countrye me whirrye.
1621. T. Bedford, Sin unto Death, 29. The … sea that is … whirryed and tossed with a tempestuous winde.
1660. Bonde, Scut. Reg., 51. As the unruly quadrupedes whirried about the Chariot,… untill they had set the whole world on fire.
a. 1756. Halket, in W. Walker, Bards Bon-Accord (1887), 205. Ill boding comets blaze o’erhead, O whirry whigs awa’, man.
1820. Scott, Monast., Introd. Ep. ‘Some of the quality, that were o’ his ain unhappy persuasion, had the corpse whirried away up the water.’
fig. 1619. Sclater, Expos. 1 Thess. v. 21. 548. Giddie and inconstant people, wherried about with euery blast of vaine Doctrine.
1621. T. Williamson, trans. Goulart’s Wise Vieillard, 58. Whurried about with intemperate lusts and desires.
1675. T. Brooks, Gold. Key, 4. A Christian is sometimes wherried and whirled away by sin before he is a ware.
2. intr. To move or go rapidly, hurry.
c. 1630. Robin Goodfellow, in Roxb. Ball. (1874), II. 82. Through pooles and ponds, I whirry, laughing, ho, ho, ho!
1691. Sir T. P. Blount, Ess., 103. When once the spoke of the Wheel is uppermost, it soon whurries to the bottom.
1818. Scott, Hrt. Midl., xviii. Her and the gudeman will be whirrying through the blue lift on a broom-shank.
