eddy

eddy n Eddy, whirlpool, maelstrom, vortex mean a swirling mass especially of water. Eddy implies swift circular movement (as in water, wind, dust, or mist) caused by a countercurrent or, more often, by something that obstructs; it is usually thought of less as dangerous than as annoying or confusing

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it is blunt tails [of ships] rather than blunt noses that cause eddies— W. H. White

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a thick brown fog, whirled into eddies by the wind . . . abolished the landscape from before our smarting eyes— Huxley

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Whirlpool suggests a more extensive and more violent eddy in water; usually it implies a force of swirling water (as at a meeting of countercurrents) so great as to send whatever enters whirling toward a center where it is sucked down

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pass safely through the whirlpool of the Niagara River in a barrel

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but it may also be extended to other things that draw or suck one in like a swirl of raging water

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live in a whirlpool of excitement

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Europeans . . . have assumed . . . that public life will draw . . . enough of the highest ability into its whirlpool— Bryce

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Maelstrom is basically the name of a very powerful whirlpool off the west coast of Norway which was supposed to suck in all vessels that passed within a wide radius; the term is extended to any great turmoil that resistlessly drags men into it

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in one wild maelstrom of affrighted men— J. S. C. Abbott

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in the maelstrom of wild controversy

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the ancient taboos were gone, lost in the maelstrom of war— Coulton Waugh

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Vortex usually suggests a mass of liquid (as water) or gas (as air) rapidly circulating around a hollow center; it is visualized principally as something which draws all that become involved in the swirling into its center

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the cleansing power of the vortex of water in a washing machine

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the noise of the vortex of soapy water draining from the bathtub

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Conventions are shifting, and undergoing metamorphosis. . . . But it is hard to estimate justly the significance of their contemporary behavior, because we are caught in the vortex— Lowes

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it is Koestler and Silone, who went deepest into the vortex of revolutionary activity, who emerge with the profoundest insights— Time

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drawn back into the emotional vortex of a youthful love affair— Geismar

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eddy vb rotate, gyrate, circle, spin, whirl, revolve, *turn, twirl, wheel, swirl, pirouette