gyre

noun

No English definition recorded for this entry.

Wiktionary

Pronunciation: /d͡ʒaɪ.ə/ / /d͡ʒaɪ.ɚ/

noun

Etymology: Borrowed from Latin gȳrus (“circle; circular motion”), from Ancient Greek γῦρος (gûros, “circle; ring”), from Proto-Indo-European *gew- (“to bend; to curve”). The English word is a doublet of gyro and gyrus.

A swirling vortex.
A circular or spiral motion; also, a circle described by a moving body; a revolution, a turn.
“Quick, and more quick he ſpins in giddy Gires, / Then falls, and in much Foam his Soul expires.”
“What is art, / But life upon the larger scale, the higher, / When, graduating up in a spiral line / Of still expanding and ascending gyres, / It pushes toward the intense significance / Of all things, hungry for the Infinite? / Art's life,—and where we live, we suffer and toil.”
Synonym of gyrus (“a fold or ridge on the cerebral cortex of the brain”).
An ocean current caused by wind which moves in a circular manner, especially one that is large-scale and observed in a major ocean.
“Most ships that tried to cross the Pacific in the past would get stuck in the gyres and never make it out.”

verb

Etymology: From Late Middle English giren (“to turn (something) away; to cause (something) to revolve or rotate; to travel in a circle”), from Old French girer (“to turn”), and directly from its etymon Latin gȳrāre, the present active infinitive of gȳrō (“to turn in a circle, rotate; to circle or revolve around”), from gȳrus (“circle; circular motion”) (see etymology 1) + -ō (suffix forming regular first-conjugation verbs).

To spin around; to gyrate, to whirl.
“The host of heauenly beautyes moue, / Depainted in their proper stories, / As well the fixd as wandring glories, / Which from their proper orbes not goe, / Whether they gyre swift or slowe: […]”
“Jabberwocky. / 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves / Did gyre and gimble in the wa[b]e; / All mimsy were the borogoves, / And the mome raths outgrabe.”
To make (something) spin or whirl around; to spin, to whirl.