English
vortex
Pronunciation
  • (GA) IPA: /ˈvɔɹtɛks/
  • (America)
Noun

vortex (plural vortexes or vortices)

  1. A whirlwind, whirlpool, or similarly moving matter in the form of a spiral or column.
  2. (figuratively) Anything that involves constant violent or chaotic activity around some centre.
    • 2004: the consumer vortex that is East Hampton — The New Yorker, 30 August 2004, p.38
  3. (figuratively) Anything that inevitably draws surrounding things into its current.
    • 1826, Mary Shelley, The Last Man, part 2, chapter 1
      In early youth, the living drama acted around me, drew my heart and soul into its vortex.
  4. (historical) A supposed collection of particles of very subtle matter, endowed with a rapid rotary motion around an axis which was also the axis of a sun or planet; part of a Cartesian theory accounting for the formation of the universe, and the movements of the bodies composing it.
  5. (zoology) Any of numerous species of small Turbellaria belonging to Vortex and allied genera.
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