WHIRL • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Whirl

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/wərl/ /hwərl/ Listen

noun

Whirl n.

A turning with rapidity or velocity; rapid rotation or circumvolution; quick gyration; rapid or confusing motion; as, the whirl of a top; the whirl of a wheel. "In no breathless whirl." "The rapid... whirl of things here below interrupt not the inviolable rest and calmness of the noble beings above."

Anything that moves with a whirling motion. "He saw Falmouth under gray, iron skies, and whirls of March dust."

A revolving hook used in twisting, as the hooked spindle of a rope machine, to which the threads to be twisted are attached.

(Bot. & Zool.) A whorl. See Whorl.

verb

Whirl v. t. (past & past part. whirled; pres. part. whirling)

To turn round rapidly; to cause to rotate with velocity; to make to revolve. "He whirls his sword around without delay."

To remove or carry quickly with, or as with, a revolving motion; to snatch; to harry. "See, see the chariot, and those rushing wheels, That whirled the prophet up at Chebar flood." "The passionate heart of the poet is whirl'd into folly."

Whirl v. i.

To be turned round rapidly; to move round with velocity; to revolve or rotate with great speed; to gyrate. "The whirling year vainly my dizzy eyes pursue." "The wooden engine flies and whirls about."

To move hastily or swiftly. "But whirled away to shun his hateful sight."

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Etymology of 'Whirl'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Whirl" Quotes from Famous Books

... mid clouds of scattered rice, through all the wedding whirl A laughing fellow hurries out a certain graceless girl, Unless my hand have lost its strength, unless my eye be dim, I'll lift the shoe, the contract too, and fling the lot ...

— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann

... occur, in more or less perfection, in all young vegetable cells. If such be the case, the wonderful noonday silence of a tropical forest is, after all, due only to the dulness of our hearing; and could our ears catch the murmur of these tiny Maelstroms, as they whirl in the innumerable myriads of living cells which constitute each tree, we should be stunned, as with the roar of a ...

— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... you see that two boys and an old man are sitting on the roof of a house about as high as a tool-shed, trying to get their kites up. And you say to yourself that it is lucky that there are no horses, for the quietest beast that ever lifted a hoof would bolt here and charge through the whirl and uproar and the rain of ...

— Peeps at Many Lands: Japan • John Finnemore

... comfortable armchair and into this he sank... A number of very discrepant things were busy in his mind. He had experienced a disconcerting personal attack. There was a whirl of active resentment in ...

— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... dancer crawls about the fire on all fours with a bear's skin about him. He wears a chain of oak-balls round his neck, and as he shakes his head these rattle like a bear's teeth snapping shut, while all the time he growls savagely. The feather-dancer, with a skirt and cap of eagles' feathers, will whirl on his toes like a top for hours, while the other Indians sing and the master of the dance shakes ...

— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton

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