A kind of shawm similar to the Turkish zurna, introduced into Macedonia and neighbouring Balkan states by Romani peoples.
1940
When the drums join in, the two larger oboes accompany the sibs in the lower octave. This must be an old custom, for the same is true for the Turkish oboes surle played by Croatian gypsies.
C. Sachs, History of Musical Instruments (1942) xiii. 249
1953
We may assume that the Persian word zurnâ is the root from which zurna, zurne, zurla and surla were derived.
Y. Arbatsky, Beating Tupan in Central Balkans 4
1957
We have only the notion, based on general historical grounds, that the parent instrument of the staple-bearing kind is the Middle Eastern shawm surna, a variety of which, frequently heard at our folk~dance festival, is the Macedonian zurla.
A. C. Baines, Woodwind Instruments & their History ix. 229
1962
The Gypsies in Balkan countries used, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the following musical instruments: tambourine, cymbalum, drum and zurla (a wind-instrument of Oriental origin).
Journal Gypsy Lore Societyvol. 41 43
1975
The facts suggest that the modern Turkish shawm represents a development independent of the shawms of Western Europe. The two types co-exist today in Yugoslavia, where the zurla has a ‘head’ comparable with that of Anatolian and Thracian zurna.
L. Picken, Folk Musical Instruments of Turkeyiv. 499
1975
To group (b) belong the shawms-with-finger-holes of Macedonia, both those of Yugoslavia—zurla..and those of Greece—zourná.
L. Picken, Folk Musical Instruments of Turkeyiv. 500
Some consonants can take the function of the vowel in unstressed syllables. Where necessary, a syllabic marker diacritic is used, hence /ˈpɛtl/ but /ˈpɛtl̩i/.
Vowels
iːfleece
ihappy
ɪkit
ɛdress
atrap, bath
ɑːstart, palm, bath
ɒlot
ɔːthought, force
ʌstrut
ʊfoot
uːgoose
əletter
əːnurse
ɪənear
ɛːsquare
ʊəcure
eɪface
ʌɪpride
aʊmouth
əʊgoat
ɔɪvoice
ãgratin
ɒ̃salon
ᵻ(/ɪ/-/ə/)
ᵿ(/ʊ/-/ə/)
Other symbols
The symbol ˈ at the beginning of a syllable indicates that that syllable is pronounced with primary stress.
The symbol ˌ at the beginning of a syllable indicates that that syllable is pronounced with secondary stress.
Round brackets ( ) in a transcription indicate that the symbol within the brackets is optional.
zurla typically occurs fewer than 0.01 times per million words in modern written English.
zurla is in frequency band 2, which contains words occurring between 0.001 and 0.01 times per million words in modern written English. More about OED's frequency bands
Frequency data is computed programmatically, and should be regarded as an estimate.
Frequency of zurla, n., 1940–2010
* Occurrences per million words in written English
Historical frequency series are derived from Google Books Ngrams (version 2), a data set based on the Google Books corpus of several million books printed in English between 1500 and 2010.
The overall frequency for a given word is calculated by summing frequencies for the main form of the word, any plural or inflected forms, and any major spelling variations.
For sets of homographs (distinct entries that share the same word-form, e.g. mole, n.¹, mole, n.², mole, n.³, etc.), we have estimated the frequency of each homograph entry as a fraction of the total Ngrams frequency for the word-form. This may result in inaccuracies.
Smoothing has been applied to series for lower-frequency words, using a moving-average algorithm. This reduces short-term fluctuations, which may be produced by variability in the content of the Google Books corpus.
Decade
Frequency per million words
1940
0.0018
1950
0.0016
1960
0.0015
1970
0.0014
1980
0.0016
1990
0.0008
2000
0.0009
2010
0.001
zurla, n. was first published in 1986; not fully revised.