Dictionary

circumgyrate en · VERB

Pronunciation

• /ˌsə.kəmˈdʒaɪ.ɹeɪt/ (UK)
• /ˌsɝ.kəmˈd͡ʒaɪ.ɹeɪt/ (US)

Etymology

Borrowed from Medieval Latin circumgȳrō; equivalent to circum- + gyrate.

Meanings

1. (intransitive) To move around something.
   • Volyendesta is a watery planet, with a large, rapidly circumgyrating moon afflicting its inhabitants with a vast variety of unstable moods […] 1983, Doris Lessing, The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire, New York: Vintage, published 1984, page 7:
   • Only an incident in the sun’s system is eight small potatoes, called planets, circumgyrating at distances from 36 million to 2,791 million miles from the central sun. 1926, Baker Brownell, The New Universe: A Biography of the Worlds in Which We Live, New York: Van Nostrand, Book 1, Chapter 3, p. 47:
2. (transitive) To cause to move around something; to cause to orbit.
   • The soul about it self circumgyrates Her various forms, 1642, Henry More, Psychodia Platonica, or, A Platonicall Song of the Soul, Cambridge: Roger Daniel, Book 1, Canto 2, stanza 43, p. 18:
3. (intransitive) To turn in a circle around an axis or fixed point.
   • Indirect power is the same as that which is sometimes called directive power or potestas directiva. For the word “direct,” one day, got up and turned its back upon itself. Its meaning has circumgyrated. 1874, Lord Robert Montagu, Expostulation in Extremis, London: Burns & Oates, page 46:
4. (transitive) To cause to turn in a circle around an axis or fixed point.
   • […] the one who impressed me most [was] a rumba dancer […] known for dancing to the rhythm of Cuban drums in a bikini with silver fringes while somehow circumgyrating at variable and independent speeds, each of her enormous tits […] 2005, Paquito D’Rivera, “Music and Musicians”, in Luis Tamargo, transl., My Sax Life, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, page 22:
   • […] a wheel, when circumgyrated upon its Axe, is sensibly moved, but not removed from one place to another. 1654, Walter Charleton, Physiologia Epicuro-Gassendo-Charltoniana, or, A Fabrick of Science Natural, Book 4, Chapter 2, Section 1, p. 439:
5. (intransitive) To make circuits (around an area or space).
   • […] every motion of the small fish playing in its [the stream’s] pellucid pools, was as distinctly visible as those of the unfortunate goldfish one sometimes observes pensively circumgyrating in the interior of its enchanted globular ball in the shop-window. 1854, George Ballantine, chapter 13, in Autobiography of an English Soldier in the United States Army, New York: Stringer & Townsend, page 159:
   • […] the philosopher with his long white hair hanging down his shoulders, either writing in his library or “circumnavigating” round his garden […] 1899, Clement Boulton Roylance Kent, chapter 2, in The English Radicals: A Historical Sketch, London: Longmans, Green, page 205:
6. (intransitive) To be formed into a bent or curved shape (around something).
   • 1850, Oliver Tiffany, Canada Patent No. 298,“Certain improvement in the apparatus for warming houses,” Patents of Canada, from 1849 to 1855, Volume 2, Toronto, 1865, […] it circumgyrates round the stove, and exposes its large surfaces to the air warming space […]
7. (transitive) To form into a bent or curved shape.
   • You can’t begin to try to tell him till you’ve clean circumgyrated yourself away down into his confidence. 1894, George Washington Cable, chapter 46, in John March, Southerner, New York: Scribner, page 268:
   • […] that […] all the Glands of the Body should be Congeries of various sorts of Vessels curl’d, circumgyrated and complicated together, whereby they give the Blood time to stop and separate through the Pores of the capillary Vessels into the Secretory ones, 1692, John Ray, The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation, 2nd edition, London: Samuel Smith, Part 2, p. 64:

Forms

Relateds

circumgyratory · circumgyration

Synonyms

spin · revolve · spin · wreathe · contort · rotate · orbit · twine · rotate · twist