Meaning of gyre | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A swirling vortex.
   literary, poetic
2. A circular or spiral motion; also, a circle described by a moving body; a revolution, a turn.
   literary, poetic
3. Synonym of gyrus (“a fold or ridge on the cerebral cortex of the brain”).
   archaic
4. An ocean current caused by wind which moves in a circular manner, especially one that is large-scale and observed in a major ocean.

Equivalents

Examples

“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.”

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer; / Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, […]”

“Most ships that tried to cross the Pacific in the past would get stuck in the gyres and never make it out.”

CEFR level