Etymology Dictionary

VEER,  to turn round, change direction, swerve.  (F.,—L.)   'Vere the main shete;' Spenser, F. Q. i. 12. 1; 'and vereth his main sheat,' id. v. 12. 18.   [The spelling with e or ee is hard to explain; but it proves a confusion between the sound of ee in Elizabeth's time and that of F. i.   Sir P. Sidney writes vire; see Nares.]—F. virer, 'to veer, turne round, wheele or whirle about;' Cot.   β. The F. virer is the same word as Span. virar, birar, to wind, twist, tack, or veer, Port. virar, to turn, change, Prov. virar, to turn, to change (Bartsch).   Allied words are Port. viravolta, a circular motion, Ital. virolare, 'to scrue,' i.e. twist round (Florio); &c.   The orig. sense is to turn round, and it appears as Low Lat. virare, which is rather an old word (Diez); it appears also in F. en-vir-on, round about, in a circle (whence E. environs), in F. vir-ole (whence E. ferrule), and in F. vir-ol-et, 'a boy's windmill,' Cot.   γ. The key to this difficult word lies in the sense of 'ring' or 'circle' as appearing in environ and ferrule; the Low Lat. virola, a ring to bind anything, answers to Lat. uiriola, a bracelet, dimin. of uiria, an armlet, large ring, gen. used in the pl. form uiriæ.—WI, to twist, wind round; see Ferrule, Withy.   ¶ The Du. vieren, to veer, is merely borrowed (like our own word) from F. virer.   The old derivation of virer from Lat. gyrare cannot possibly be sustained.   Der. (from Lat. uir-ia), en-vir-on, ferr-ule.