[f. prec. sb.]
1. trans. To bewilder or confuse as by haste or noise; to agitate, ‘put out.’
a. 1757. E. Moore, Envy & Fort., 71.
| And wiping her forehead, cry’d, ‘Well may you wonder | |
| To see me thus flurry’d.’ |
1771. Mad. D’Arblay, Diary, July. This flurried me violently, insomuch that my memory failed me, and I forgot my old part, without seeming to learn my new one.
1832. Ht. Martineau, Hill & Valley, i. 11. How you flurry yourself for nothing!
1886. G. R. Sims, Ring o’ Bells, etc., xvi. 283. He stumbled through the scene, missed his cue, flurried the other performers, and seemed only in a hurry to get on and quit the stage.
2. intr. To flutter down in sudden or gusty showers. ? U.S.
1883. H. H. Kane, A Hashish-House in New York, in Harper’s Mag., LXVII. Nov., 947. The music seemed to creep up through the heavy carpet, to ooze from the walls, to flurry, like snow-flakes, from the ceiling, rising and falling in measured cadences unlike any music I had ever heard.
1884. Roe, Nat. Ser. Story, vii. The petals of the cherry were flurrying down like snow in every passing breeze, glimmering momentarily in the pale radiance.
Hence Flurried ppl. a.; Flurriedly adv., in a flurried manner.
1775. Mad. D’Arblay, Diary, May. She afterwards played a very difficult lesson of my father’s; but she was so much flurried, that she neither did that nor herself justice.
1800. Mrs. Hervey, The Mourtray Family, III. 235. Sensible, that it would be utterly impossible for her to calm her flurried spirits, before the return of her friends, she bade the servant say, that she had a pain in her face, and was gone to bed.
1834. Blackw. Mag., XXXV. Jan., 137/1. Vasantasena running flurriedly out, supposes it to be the carriage of her lord and master.
1844. Alb. Smith, Adv. Mr. Ledbury, xxiv. (1886), 75. Titus immediately returned the salute with flurried courtesy.
1875. Jowett, Plato (ed. 2), III. 208, The Republic, I. What are you saying? he asked flurriedly.
