Word.ws English Dictionary

stirk

/stɜːk/US/stɝk/

stirk noun: a yearling cow; a young bullock or heifer.

Noun

stirk (plural stirks)

  1. (Scotland, UK, dated, dialectal) A yearling cow; a young bullock or heifer.
    • But beware of MacPhadraick, my son; for when he called himself the friend of your father, he better loved the most worthless stirk in his herd, than he did the life-blood of MacTavish Mhor.1827, [Walter Scott], chapter XI, in Chronicles of the Canongate; […], volume I (The Highland Widow), Edinburgh: […] [Ballantyne and Co.] for Cadell and Co.; London: Simpkin and Marshall, →OCLC, page...
    • Comprising eleven calved and in-calf cows and heifers, three barren cows, four fat cows and heifers, two sturks and three yearlings; fifteen in-lamb ewes and theaves, […]1843 March 3, “To Be Sold by Auction, By B. Cheatle & Son”, in Leicester Journal, and Midland Counties General Advertiser, volume 92, number 4895, Leicester: James Jackson, page 2

Forms of stirk

pluralstirks

Origin of stirk

From Middle English stirk, sterke, styrke, from Old English stīrc, stȳrc, stȳric, stīorc (“calf, a stirk, a young bullock or a heifer”), from Proto-West Germanic *stiurik, from Proto-Germanic *stiurikaz (“bullock”), diminutive of Proto-Germanic *steuraz (“steer”), equivalent to steer + -ock. Cognate with Middle Low German sterke (“stirk”), Middle Dutch stierick ("stirk"; compare Modern Dutch sterke (“young cow”)), German Sterk, Stärke, Stark (“stirk”). More at steer.

Words that rhyme with stirk

35 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about stirk

What does stirk mean?
Stirk means a yearling cow; a young bullock or heifer.
What part of speech is stirk?
Stirk is a noun.
How do you pronounce stirk?
Stirk is pronounced /stɜːk/ (UK).
What is the plural of stirk?
The plural of stirk is stirks.

Words near stirk in the dictionary

  1. stirfrys
  2. stiria
  3. stiriated
  4. stirious
  5. stiripentol
  6. stirk
  7. stirks
  8. stirless
  9. stirlessly
  10. stirlessness
  11. Stirling

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stirk (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-stirk.wav.

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