Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Having or forming whorls or a whorl.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Furnished with whorls; verticillate.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Furnished with whorls; arranged in the form of a whorl or whorls; verticillate.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective formed from whorls; having whorls

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective in the shape of a coil
  • adjective forming one or more whorls (especially a whorl of leaves around a stem)

Etymologies

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Examples

  • It was a world inhabited by sea creatures and whorled growths, forms with a pleasing balance of rigid symmetry and organic irregularity.

    Wolfram Blog : Hybrid Logos and a Fortunate Mistake 2009

  • The ancestral state in other characters is equivocal: e.g., bisexual vs. unisexual flowers, whorled vs. spiral floral phyllotaxis, presence vs. absence of tepal differentiation, anatropous vs. orthotropous ovules.

    A Disclaimer for Behe? 2009

  • We recognized headwaiters and porters, pool boys and cabaret singers, whorled barnacles for fingertips.

    Passeridae Wendy Wimmer 2011

  • Most prominent among them were a tall man with a whorled sea-shell of a helmet and a four hundred pound enormity in gaudy ceremonial armor.

    Virginity Sydney Kilgore 2010

  • The bandit walked another step, unknowing, then his mouth fell open and he looked down at the sharp whorled spike that had seemingly grown out of his heart.

    Zombies vs. Unicorns Justine Larbalestier 2010

  • His hair had dried in bronze streaks and whorled over my breasts like the petals of a Chinese chrysanthemum.

    Sick Cycle Carousel 2010

  • He pulls a white bar of soap with two hairs wrapped around it from the splash pad, and rubs it over his hands and wrists before lathering every inch of his naked, whorled body.

    Maximus and Kimchi 2010

  • She threw her arms in the air, where they flickered and whorled like ribbons in the wind.

    Wired Robin Wasserman 2010

  • Unlike the Hollywood outsiders playing with six-shooters, Adakai could name all the sandstone spires, massive buttes, and whorled arches, bathed in reflected red: the Right Mitten and the Left, Gray Whiskers, Three Sisters, Bear and Rabbit, King on His Throne, arrayed in an ancient skyline that could have passed for Mars.

    Yellow Dirt Judy Pasternak 2010

  • What's there is a furling, shimmering loop of ice, whorled loosely like a bundle of ribbon, not neatly wound — instead hastily stuffed in a brown paper bag by a clerk.

    A Winter Gift 2009

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