What's the difference between shire and shirl?

Shire

Definition:

(n.) A portion of Great Britain originally under the supervision of an earl; a territorial division, usually identical with a county, but sometimes limited to a smaller district; as, Wiltshire, Yorkshire, Richmondshire, Hallamshire.
(n.) A division of a State, embracing several contiguous townships; a county.

Example Sentences:

(1) At stake is voting for a third of the council seats in each of the 36 English metropolitan districts; a third of seats in 16 unitary authorities (plus two, Hartlepool and Swindon where all seats are voting, due to boundary changes); and various proportions of the seats in 74 shire districts (63 by thirds, seven for half the seats, and four all-out).
(2) Approximately 1,056 dwellings were located in the Oberon Shire by the interviewers; household interviews were obtained from 789 of them.
(3) Shire, which is itself thought to be a target for acquisition , paid $4.2bn last year to acquire rare diseases specialist ViroPharma and its lucrative pipeline of products.
(4) Ørnskov, who has been running Shire since May 2013, set out a plea to remain independent last month even as he admitted that he could not close the door on bids.
(5) The suicide rate of 15-19-year-old males has shown a modest increase in Sydney and no change in Newcastle or Wollongong, but the rate for 15-19-year-old males in rural cities has more than doubled, from 5.1 to 12.5 (F = 7.7, P less than 0.003), while in rural municipalities and shires, the rate has increased more than fivefold, from 3.9 to 20.7 (F = 9.3, P less than 0.001).
(6) Emotionally in the community it’s very divided”, says Andrew Hope, the mayor of Liverpool Plains Shire Council.
(7) A Guardian analysis has found: A Luxembourg unit of Shire, the FTSE-100 drug firm behind attention deficit pill Adderall, received more than $1.9bn in interest income from other group companies in the last five years, paying corporation tax of less than $2m over four of the years despite minimal overheads.
(8) It’ll be really challenging having four students because I’m used to having just one on a standard practice placement,” says Shires, who is currently a social worker on the local authority’s psychosis early intervention team.
(9) Away from Luxembourg, more than two-thirds of Shire’s $5bn in annual revenues came from the sale of prescription drugs in the US and Canada last year.
(10) AbbVie is keen to expand its medicine base but could also benefit from Shire by moving its tax base to Britain.
(11) FOLLOW MY LEADER: THE BIG SPEECHES Cameron will need to hit the Tory sweet spot if he is to send everyone home happy – and that means avoiding incendiary issues in the shires, such as gay marriage and the green agenda.
(12) Both companies have operations in Britain, but Shire's UK base is more modest than AstraZeneca's.
(13) Shire expects to make $150m of cost savings by 2015 as it reorganises the businesses.
(14) The subsequent collapse of AbbVie’s planned £34bn takeover of the FTSE 100 firm Shire – the biggest to be scuttled by the White House’s clampdown on inversions – showed that the “tax inversion risk, quite frankly, has become a reality”, he said.
(15) The rally drew heavy resistance from community groups in the Sutherland shire.
(16) Victoria Shires, 21, studying English and drama at the University of Birmingham "I wish I'd known what a class shock university would be, so I could have prepared more.
(17) Susan Kilsby, Shire's chairman, said: "Shire has a long track record of delivering for shareholders and addressing unmet patient needs ... We believe that Shire has a strong independent future."
(18) The UK parliament’s public accounts committee this week summoned PwC to give evidence alongside its FTSE 100 tax client Shire, the drugs firm which moved tax domicile to Ireland six years ago for tax reasons.
(19) It is also taking a closer look at Shire's drug pipeline in light of its forecast that it can double revenues to $10bn by 2020.
(20) Dogs laze in the stifling afternoon heat of the Shire Valley.