gyre

noun

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

   “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, […]”

3. (archaic)Synonym of gyrus (“a fold or ridge on the cerebral cortex of the brain”).
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.

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

verb

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

   “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: […]”

   “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. (literary, poetic, rare, transitive)To make (something) spin or whirl around; to spin, to whirl.