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Whorl   Listen
noun
Whorl  n.  
1.
(Bot.) A circle of two or more leaves, flowers, or other organs, about the same part or joint of a stem.
2.
(Zool.) A volution, or turn, of the spire of a univalve shell.
3.
(Spinning) The fly of a spindle.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Whorl" Quotes from Famous Books



... father over on the bed. He fought to a sitting posture again ... got his finger in my eye and made me see a whorl of dancing sparks. With irritation and a curse ... then both laughing hysterically and sobbing ... I bore ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... psychology Bain and others use it of association of ideas and action; in pathology an adhesion is an abnormal union of surfaces; and in botany "adhesion'' is used of dissimilar parts, e.g. in floral whorls, in opposition to "cohesion,'' which applies to similar parts, e.g. of the same whorl. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... huddled huts of the campoodie, and the largest of them might be a man's length in diameter. In their season, which is after the gilias are at their best, and before the larkspurs are ripe for pollen gathering, every terminal whorl of the lupin sends up its blossom stalk, not holding any constant blue, but paling and purpling to guide the friendly bee to virginal honey sips, or away from the perfected and depleted flower. The length of the blossom stalk ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin

... persuading myself that I could ever be happy away from home, and again I compared my lot with that of one of the speckled soldier-crabs that roamed about in my Father's aquarium, dragging after them great whorl-shells. They, if by chance they were turned out of their whelk-habitations, trailed about a pale soft body in search of another house, visibly broken-hearted and the ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... I witness every afternoon a glorious transformation in my experimental garden at Sijbaria on the Ganges. The gardener has planted a large field with Jhinga (Luffa acutangula). The flowers when closed at day time are very inconspicuous, the lowest whorl of the sepals being dull green: in my afternoon walk I can hardly recognise the old familiar field, which is now covered with masses of flower in their golden glory. Here also the flowers remain open throughout the night; but they close early in the morning and the fairy ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose

... familiar and delicious emotion. Now she curtsied, as she had curtsied for the last fifty nights, bowing lower and lower till her hair fell over her face and swept the stage; and now she shook her head till the great golden whorl of hair seemed the only part of her left spinning; then Poppy folded her arms and sank, sank till she sat on her heels, herself invisible, curtained in modest and mystic fashion ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... babies or goods she carries, has a hank of the fibre thrown over her shoulder, and keeps her little spindle whirling, spinning the strong thread as she walks. Her spindle consists of a slender stick thrust through a whorl of baked pottery. Such whorls are no longer made, but the ancient ones, called by the Aztec name malacates, are picked up in the fields and reapplied to their old use. Usually the ixtli thread ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr

... The whorl of a sea shell,[8] ground and polished into white heavy rings, whose cross section is an isosceles triangle, form a very common forearm adornment for women on the upper Agsan. Sometimes as many as five of these are worn, ordinarily on the left ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... travelers made them a hut in broad branches of a great fir, for the snow was more than man-deep already, and crusted over. They laid sticks on the five-branched whorl and cut away the boughs above them until they could stand. Here they nested, with the snow on the upper branches like thatch to keep them safe against the wind. They ran on the surface of the snow, which was packed firm in the bottom of the Trap, and caught birds and small game wintering ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al

... homologous parts, such as buds, flowers, and fruit, become blended into each other with perfect symmetry. It is interesting to examine a compound flower of this nature, formed of exactly double the proper number of sepals, petals, stamens, and pistils, with each whorl of organs circular, and with no trace left of the {342} process of fusion. The tendency in homologous parts to unite during their early development, Moquin-Tandon considers as one of the most striking laws governing the production of monsters. It apparently ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin



Words linked to "Whorl" :   dreadlock, spiral, coil, calyx, gyre, forelock, sausage curl, coif, hank, hairstyle, verticil, curlicue, roll, scroll, structure, lock, corolla, hair, coiffure, ringlet, round shape



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