1
a
: winding around a center or pole and gradually receding from or approaching it
the spiral curve of a watch spring
b
: helical
c
: spiral-bound
a spiral notebook
2
: of or relating to the advancement to higher levels through a series of cyclical movements
1
a
: the path of a point in a plane moving around a central point while continuously receding from or approaching it
b
: a three-dimensional curve (such as a helix) with one or more turns about an axis
2
: a single turn or coil in a spiral object
3
: something having a spiral form as:
a
b(1)
: a spiral flight
(2)
: a kick or pass in which a football rotates on its long axis while moving through the air
4
: a continuously spreading and accelerating increase or decrease
wage spirals
spiraled or spiralled; spiraling or spiralling
: to go and especially to rise or fall in a spiral course
costs spiraled upward
Synonyms
Examples of spiral in a Sentence
Adjective
a spiral staircase takes visitors up into the Statue of Liberty
Noun
The glider flew in a wide spiral over the field.
The quarterback threw a tight spiral to the receiver.
Verb
Smoke spiraled up from the chimney.
The airplane spiraled to the ground and crashed.
The unemployment rate has been spiraling upward.
The stock market is spiraling downward.
Let's deal with this crisis before it spirals out of control.
Recent Examples on the Web
Dan Falk, Smithsonian Magazine, 13 Mar. 2024
In contrast, spiral diopter lenses differ by using a unique spiral pattern to distribute the focal powers on the output diopter.
—William A. Haseltine, Forbes, 26 Feb. 2024
The galaxy gets its nickname from the dramatic swirl of its spiral arms.
—Discover Magazine, 6 Feb. 2024
The dollhouse is like a fever dream of a penthouse, featuring the giant spiral slide from roof to pool, multiple floors, and more than 75 fun, thoughtful details and accessories: tiny fuchsia furniture and working lights!
—Malia Griggs, Glamour, 24 Nov. 2023
The online marketplace sells used cars that customers can pick up in a giant vending machine
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Back in the day, a silver quarter and the crank of a metal nob got you a gumball shooting down a spiral slide.
—Natallie Rocha, San Diego Union-Tribune, 23 Feb. 2024
It's designed to resemble a secret underground lab, complete with a blue spiral slide that adds an element of whimsical excitement.
—Jordi Lippe-McGraw, Forbes, 11 Feb. 2024
The movie becomes something like a parallel investigation rather than an attempt to directly translate the tome to the screen, emulating its spiral pattern of moving through history lessons and anecdotal evidence rather than sticking to a straight-and-narrow narrative.
—David Fear, Rolling Stone, 17 Jan. 2024
Astronomers aren’t even sure how many spiral arms the galaxy really has.
—WIRED, 12 Nov. 2023
Jack Irvin, Peoplemag, 5 Apr. 2024
The house music cuts, banana-yellow spirals light the walls and whirl.
—Jonathan Rowe, SPIN, 4 Apr. 2024
When the colonies sink below a certain threshold (around 5,000 bees), multiple things start to go wrong and the population spirals, said Brandon Hopkins, another author and manager of WSU’s apiary program and laboratory.
—Tribune News Service, The Mercury News, 2 Apr. 2024
For more than two months, Catherine, Princess of Wales, had lost control of her story to a spiral of wild, baseless online rumors.
—Mark Landler, New York Times, 23 Mar. 2024
In an image posted to NASA’s astronomy picture of the day page, Comet Pons-Brooks appears to have a light blue tail, a green outer coma, and a spiral of red glowing gas surrounding the coma.
—Greg Wehner, Fox News, 18 Mar. 2024
With his own pocketknife, V. swiftly made a spiral of red peel.
—Joseph O’Neill, The New Yorker, 11 Mar. 2024
Thousands of inmates fled during jailbreak The decree capped a deadly weekend that marked a new low in Haiti’s spiral of violence.
—Evens Sanon and Pierre-Richard Luxama, USA TODAY, 4 Mar. 2024
Each nudibranch, after its roll in the sea sponge, will then lay egg masses: orange, yellow, blue or pink spirals, some containing millions of eggs.
—Helen Sullivan, Smithsonian Magazine, 2 Apr. 2024
Bailey Lipschultz, Fortune, 13 Apr. 2024
But as Israel’s military response intensified and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza spiraled, a much broader constellation of more traditional Democratic-leaning organizations, leaders and voters began to engage.
—Sheera Frenkel, New York Times, 12 Apr. 2024
If someone loses track of the payment cycle, their debt can spiral very quickly.
—Doc Louallen, ABC News, 12 Apr. 2024
Were the President of the United States to be called upon to open the Football, the situation that would follow would almost certainly spiral out of control.
—Annie Jacobsen, TIME, 11 Apr. 2024
Titled The Synanon Fix: Did The Cure Become a Cult?, the series which premieres on April 1 analyzes how the organization’s potential to revolutionize healing spiraled into a catastrophic force.
—Skyler Caruso, Peoplemag, 2 Apr. 2024
Newtown Police Chief Tom Synan’s bold stance against punishing people spiraling from opioid use disorder resonated across the nation and landed in Rolling Stone – and a lot of other places across the United States (and some overseas).
—The Enquirer, 26 Mar. 2024
In 2020, the International Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment at the United Kingdom’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory showed individual muons spiraled through a cooling cell as predicted.
—Byadrian Cho, science.org, 28 Mar. 2024
The economy is in deep decline, the cost of living has spiraled, and public services are collapsing—water deregulation has left Britain swimming in a moat of its own excrement.
—Peter Guest, WIRED, 26 Mar. 2024
Adjective
In northwestern Europe, for example, ancient stone carvings often display spiral patterns that are sometimes interpreted as representing the sun, and possibly a solar eclipse.
—Dan Falk, Smithsonian Magazine, 13 Mar. 2024
In contrast, spiral diopter lenses differ by using a unique spiral pattern to distribute the focal powers on the output diopter.
—William A. Haseltine, Forbes, 26 Feb. 2024
The galaxy gets its nickname from the dramatic swirl of its spiral arms.
—Discover Magazine, 6 Feb. 2024
The dollhouse is like a fever dream of a penthouse, featuring the giant spiral slide from roof to pool, multiple floors, and more than 75 fun, thoughtful details and accessories: tiny fuchsia furniture and working lights!
—Malia Griggs, Glamour, 24 Nov. 2023
The online marketplace sells used cars that customers can pick up in a giant vending machine
Facebook
Show more sharing options
Back in the day, a silver quarter and the crank of a metal nob got you a gumball shooting down a spiral slide.
—Natallie Rocha, San Diego Union-Tribune, 23 Feb. 2024
It's designed to resemble a secret underground lab, complete with a blue spiral slide that adds an element of whimsical excitement.
—Jordi Lippe-McGraw, Forbes, 11 Feb. 2024
The movie becomes something like a parallel investigation rather than an attempt to directly translate the tome to the screen, emulating its spiral pattern of moving through history lessons and anecdotal evidence rather than sticking to a straight-and-narrow narrative.
—David Fear, Rolling Stone, 17 Jan. 2024
Astronomers aren’t even sure how many spiral arms the galaxy really has.
—WIRED, 12 Nov. 2023
Noun
With this season, the spiral has been a real symbol for this whole era.
—Jack Irvin, Peoplemag, 5 Apr. 2024
The house music cuts, banana-yellow spirals light the walls and whirl.
—Jonathan Rowe, SPIN, 4 Apr. 2024
When the colonies sink below a certain threshold (around 5,000 bees), multiple things start to go wrong and the population spirals, said Brandon Hopkins, another author and manager of WSU’s apiary program and laboratory.
—Tribune News Service, The Mercury News, 2 Apr. 2024
For more than two months, Catherine, Princess of Wales, had lost control of her story to a spiral of wild, baseless online rumors.
—Mark Landler, New York Times, 23 Mar. 2024
In an image posted to NASA’s astronomy picture of the day page, Comet Pons-Brooks appears to have a light blue tail, a green outer coma, and a spiral of red glowing gas surrounding the coma.
—Greg Wehner, Fox News, 18 Mar. 2024
With his own pocketknife, V. swiftly made a spiral of red peel.
—Joseph O’Neill, The New Yorker, 11 Mar. 2024
Thousands of inmates fled during jailbreak The decree capped a deadly weekend that marked a new low in Haiti’s spiral of violence.
—Evens Sanon and Pierre-Richard Luxama, USA TODAY, 4 Mar. 2024
Each nudibranch, after its roll in the sea sponge, will then lay egg masses: orange, yellow, blue or pink spirals, some containing millions of eggs.
—Helen Sullivan, Smithsonian Magazine, 2 Apr. 2024
Verb
Of course, the value of the additional windfall has spiraled with shares tumbling.
—Bailey Lipschultz, Fortune, 13 Apr. 2024
But as Israel’s military response intensified and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza spiraled, a much broader constellation of more traditional Democratic-leaning organizations, leaders and voters began to engage.
—Sheera Frenkel, New York Times, 12 Apr. 2024
If someone loses track of the payment cycle, their debt can spiral very quickly.
—Doc Louallen, ABC News, 12 Apr. 2024
Were the President of the United States to be called upon to open the Football, the situation that would follow would almost certainly spiral out of control.
—Annie Jacobsen, TIME, 11 Apr. 2024
Titled The Synanon Fix: Did The Cure Become a Cult?, the series which premieres on April 1 analyzes how the organization’s potential to revolutionize healing spiraled into a catastrophic force.
—Skyler Caruso, Peoplemag, 2 Apr. 2024
Newtown Police Chief Tom Synan’s bold stance against punishing people spiraling from opioid use disorder resonated across the nation and landed in Rolling Stone – and a lot of other places across the United States (and some overseas).
—The Enquirer, 26 Mar. 2024
In 2020, the International Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment at the United Kingdom’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory showed individual muons spiraled through a cooling cell as predicted.
—Byadrian Cho, science.org, 28 Mar. 2024
The economy is in deep decline, the cost of living has spiraled, and public services are collapsing—water deregulation has left Britain swimming in a moat of its own excrement.
—Peter Guest, WIRED, 26 Mar. 2024
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'spiral.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Dictionary Entries Near spiral
Cite this Entry
“Spiral.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spiral. Accessed 24 Apr. 2024.
Copy CitationKids Definition
spiral
2 of 3 noun1
a
: a curve in a plane that winds around a point while getting closer to or farther away from it
b
: a curve (as a helix) in space that winds around an axis
2
: a single turn or coil in a spiral object
3
: something having a spiral form
spiral
3 of 3 verb
spiraled or spiralled; spiraling or spiralling
: to move in a spiral path
Medical Definition
spiral
2 of 2 noun1
: the path of a point in a plane moving around a central point while continuously receding from or approaching it
2
: a three-dimensional curve (as a helix) with one or more turns about an axis
the double spiral of DNA
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