Smirry

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Marked by light rain or mist that falls in fine droplets
2. Showing conditions of drizzle or mist with spray-like precipitation
3. Displaying weather with fine misty rain or moisture in the air

Etymology: "Smirry" is a Scots and northern English adjective for weather that is damp and misty, with a fine drizzle hanging in the air. It goes with the noun "smirr," a light, almost invisible rain, and both forms are recorded in Scottish dictionaries. Their exact early history is hard to pin down. Scottish and northern English dialect often preserves older Germanic vocabulary, and the word is generally linked to a family of Scandinavian and Low German dialect words for fine rain or drizzle, but the precise line of descent is uncertain. The sound pattern of "smirr" fits a dialect coinage. The rain it names is so fine that it seems to blur the landscape, and the word captures that blur, though nothing in the record tells us who first used it. Because it survives mainly in regional speech rather than in the standard written language, its history is thinner than that of most English words, and the sources do not settle its date of first use.

Synonyms: drizzly, misty, foggy

Antonyms: clear, sunny