gyre

A gyre (sense 1.1) or whirlpool, one of the Naruto whirlpools regularly seen in the Naruto Strait, Japan.

A map showing the five major oceanwide gyres (sense 3); from left to right, they are the Indian Ocean, North Pacific and South Pacific, and North Atlantic and South Atlantic gyres.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /d͡ʒaɪ.ə/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (General American) enPR: jīər IPA^(key): /d͡ʒaɪ.ɚ/
• Rhymes: -aɪə(ɹ)
• Hyphenation: gy‧re

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.^[1]

gyre (plural gyres)

1. (chiefly literary, poetic)
   1. A swirling vortex.
   2. A circular or spiral motion; also, a circle described by a moving body; a revolution, a turn.

      Synonyms: circuit, whirl

      • 1700, [John] Dryden, “Meleager and Atalanta, out of the Eighth Book of Ovid’s Metamorphosis”, in Fables Ancient and Modern; […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, page 112:

        Quick, and more quick he ſpins in giddy Gires, / Then falls, and in much Foam his Soul expires.

      • 1856, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Fourth Book”, in Aurora Leigh, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1857, →OCLC, pages 176–177:

        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.

      • 1920, William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming”, in Michael Robartes and the Dancer, Churchtown, Dundrum [Dublin]: The Cuala Press, →OCLC, page 19:

        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, […]

2. (anatomy, zootomy, archaic) Synonym of gyrus (“a fold or ridge on the cerebral cortex of the brain”)
3. (oceanography) An ocean current caused by wind which moves in a circular manner, especially one that is large-scale and observed in a major ocean.

• gyral
• gyrally
• gyreful (obsolete, rare)

From Late Middle English giren (“to turn (something) away; to cause (something) to revolve or rotate; to travel in a circle”),^[2] 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)^[3] + -ō (suffix forming regular first-conjugation verbs).

gyre (third-person singular simple present gyres, present participle gyring, simple past and past participle gyred) (literary, poetic)

1. (intransitive) To spin around; to gyrate, to whirl.

   Synonyms: revolve, rotate

   • 1605, Michael Drayton, “[Songs from the ‘Shepherd’s Garland’.] From Eclogue ij.”, in Cyril Brett, editor, Minor Poems of Michael Drayton, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Clarendon Press, published 1907, →OCLC, pages 240–241, lines 4–8:

     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: […]

   • 1871 December 27 (indicated as 1872), Lewis Carroll [pseudonym; Charles Lutwidge Dodgson], “Looking-Glass House”, in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, London: Macmillan and Co., →OCLC, page 21:

     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.

2. (transitive, rare) To make (something) spin or whirl around; to spin, to whirl.

• gyring (adjective, noun)
• gyringly

• ocean gyre on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• gyre-carlin (etymologically unrelated)

• -ergy, Grey, grey

gȳre

1. vocative singular of gȳrus