whir

Other forms of whir

plural

whirs·

past tense or participle

whirred

present participle

whirring

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about whir

What does whir mean?

whir means "sound of something in rapid motion". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in whir?

whir has 1 syllable: whir.

What is another word for whir?

Close synonyms include whirr, whirring, birr, whizz, whiz. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is whir a common word?

whir is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.