English

Noun

wyre ‎(plural wyres)

1. Obsolete spelling of wire
   • 1591, Edmund Spenser, The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5:

     Her long loose yellow locks lyke golden wyre, Sprinckled with perle, and perling flowres atweene, Doe lyke a golden mantle her attyre, 156 And, being crowned with a girland greene, Seem lyke some mayden queene.

   • c. 1595, Thomas Nash, The Choise of Valentines:

     104 Smock, climbe a-pace, that I maie see my ioyes; Oh heauen and paradize are all but toyes Compar'd with this sight I now behould, Which well might keepe a man from being olde. 108 A prettie rysing wombe without a weame, That shone as bright as anie siluer streame; And bare out like the bending of an hill, At whose decline a fountaine dwelleth still; 112 That hath his mouth besett with uglie bryers, Resembling much a duskie nett of wyres; A loftie buttock, barrd with azure veines, Whose comelie swelling, when my hand distreines, 116 Or wanton checketh with a harmlesse stype, It makes the fruites of loue oftsoone be rype, And pleasure pluckt too tymelie from the stemme To dye ere it hath seene Jerusalem. 120 O Gods! that euer anie thing so sweete, So suddenlie should fade awaie, and fleete!

   • 1667, Samuel Pepys, Diary of Samuel Pepys, May 1667:

     Creed and I into the Park, and walked, a most pleasant evening, and so took coach, and took up my wife, and in my way home discovered my trouble to my wife for her white locks, [Randle Holmes says the ladies wore "false locks set on wyres, to make them stand at a distance from the head," and accompanies the information with the figure of a lady "with a pair of locks and curls which were in great fashion in 1670" (Planche's "Cyclopaedia of Costume;" Vol. i., p. 248).] swearing by God, several times, which I pray God forgive me for, and bending my fist, that I would not endure it.