Word.ws English Dictionary

birsy

UK/ˈbɜːsɪ/

birsy adjective: bristling, bristly (of an animal such as a wolf or a bear).

Adjective

birsy (comparative birsier, superlative birsiest)

  1. (Scotland) bristling, bristly (of an animal such as a wolf or a bear).
    • A big, birsy, gray wolf looked over its two fallen comrades, then all at once it lifted its gaze and looked John straight in the eyes, letting out a low guttural snarl.
    • Raw upon raw the birsy bere, Rax't up, sae routh and green.2000, William Soutar, Into a Room: Selected Poems of William Soutar https://books.google.ru/books?id=5zAeAQAAIAAJ&q=birsy&dq=birsy&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjEj--U8K3LAhXHGCwKHcAuAek4ChDoAQgqMAM

Forms of birsy

comparativebirsier
superlativebirsiest

Origin of birsy

From birse + -y (“having the quality of”).

Questions about birsy

What does birsy mean?
Birsy means bristling, bristly (of an animal such as a wolf or a bear).
What part of speech is birsy?
Birsy is an adjective.
How do you pronounce birsy?
Birsy is pronounced /ˈbɜːsɪ/ (UK).

Words near birsy in the dictionary

  1. Birs
  2. birse
  3. birses
  4. Birstall
  5. Birstwith
  6. birsy
  7. birt
  8. Birt-Hogg-Dubé syndrome
  9. birth
  10. birth canal
  11. birth canals

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: birsy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “birsy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/birsy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.