tura-lura
tura-lura interjection: a filler lyric (vocables).
Interjection
tura-lura
- A filler lyric (vocables).
- “Well, off with you then, and I’m off too. Sing tura la, tura la, tura lura la.”1853, Frederick Marryat, Poor Jack, H.G. Bohn, page 213
- Over in Killarney, many years ago / My Mother sang a song to me in tones so sweet and low / Just a simple little ditty, in her good ould Irish way / And I’d give the world if she could sing / That song to me this day
Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral / Too-ra-loo-ra-li / Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral / Hush now don’t...1913, James Royce Shannon, “Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ral”, “That’s an Irish Lullaby”, M.Witmark & Sons, New York
Noun
tura-lura (plural tura-luras)
- The Irish lyric.
- Carole was gracious. “You don’t do so badly. They tell me Mick Kelly’s throwing too-ra-loo-ras in your direction.”
“Mick’s swell,” Betsy agreed. “I like him a lot. He’s got ideas.”
“Well, don’t let him get away with them.” Carol’s eyebrows arched.1945 June, Daphne Alloway McVicker, “I Weep for You”, part 1 of 3, Cosmopolitan, Hearst’s International, volume 119, page 103 - Ava thinks I’m miffed because she didn’t use my suggestion of a shamrock garland so I could make a tura lura lei, but she’ll be sorry comes the day when someone else cashes in on the idea.1998, Richard McKenzie, Turn Left at the Black Cow, Roberts Rinehart, page 273
- Carole was gracious. “You don’t do so badly. They tell me Mick Kelly’s throwing too-ra-loo-ras in your direction.”
Examples of tura-lura in a sentence
- Bring your old iron, bits o’ brass / Tura-lura-laddi / Bring your old iron, bits o’ brass / Tura-lura-lido1964, “Old Iron, Bits o’ Brass”, in Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, page 102:
- Tura-luras and the blood running high! and the squawks of the seagulls during the storms...2003, Henri Godard, Fable for another time, translation of Férie pour une autre fois (1952), University of Nebraska Press, page 67
- A few more minutes and I feared I’d start sounding like one of these tura-lura-lura motherfuckers myself.2004 July, Tim Mcloughlin, “When All This was Bay Bridge”, in Brooklyn Noir, Akashic Books, →ISBN, unnumbered page:
Forms of tura-lura
| plural | tura-luras |
|---|
Questions about tura-lura
- What does tura-lura mean?
- Tura-lura means a filler lyric (vocables).
- How do you use tura-lura in a sentence?
- Bring your old iron, bits o’ brass / Tura-lura-laddi / Bring your old iron, bits o’ brass / Tura-lura-lido
- What part of speech is tura-lura?
- Tura-lura can be an interjection or a noun.
Words near tura-lura in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: tura-lura (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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “tura-lura.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tura-lura. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.