A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1367 entries
smur
Smur is fine drizzle, the misty rain that hangs in the air and soaks a person without ever seeming to fall. It is a Scots and northern English word and it is the same word as smirr, with the spelling varying by region and by writer. It names a specific and extremely common condition rather than rain in general.
Etymology
The word is Scots and appears to be related to Dutch and Low German terms for a fine drizzle or a mist, and behind those is a sense of smearing or smudging, which is what this weather does to a view. It belongs with mizzle, roke, haar, fret, and scotch mist, in the English and Scots vocabulary for water that is neither properly rain nor properly fog.
Notes
The Scots weather vocabulary distinguishes a considerable number of these and the distinctions are real: smur hangs, dreich describes the whole gray character of a day, plowtery means showery and unsettled, and drookit is the state of a person who has been out in it. That a language should develop this many words for a small quantity of falling water is not a coincidence.