to cause (as a liquid) to move about in a circle especially repeatedly
kept swirling her lemonade until the ice had melted and it was completely watered down
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Recent Examples of swirls
Verb
Max Martin, Grande sings of blowing through breakups and make-ups and enduring mounting exhaustion with mass notoriety while the music swirls patiently and frequently angrily underneath.—
Craig Jenkins,
Vulture,
3 Aug. 2026 The galaxy's heart shines brightly in the image, with gleaming rays of light radiating from its center while gas and dust swirls around.—
Chelsea Gohd,
Space.com,
19 May 2026 Longoria’s approach to the wild fervour that continually swirls around the Velodrome was to try to harness it by hiring comparably combustible coaches like Jorge Sampaoli, Igor Tudor, Gennaro Gattuso and De Zerbi.—
Tom Williams,
New York Times,
17 May 2026 To load the product onto the brush, Barnes swirls the tool into the pan twice and taps it twice to prevent fallout.—
Jenny Berg,
Vogue,
12 Dec. 2025 The lights are dim and jazzy music swirls the intimate crowd.—
Sofia Celeste,
Footwear News,
10 Oct. 2025 Energy has had a tremendous five-year run, but investors have been cautious in 2025 as uncertainty swirls around policymakers.—
Jeff Kilburg,
CNBC,
3 Oct. 2025
Noun
Such a beautiful sculpture, mimicking the swirls found in nature (the cosmos, shells, Fibonacci-following topiary) felt a far cry from the swirl of emotions prompted by my favorite TV shows.—
Lara Johnson-Wheeler,
Vogue,
3 July 2026
In a river, water slows down by the bank due to friction, and the velocity mismatches can produce vortices or eddies.
—
Stephen Ornes,
Quanta Magazine,
2 Oct. 2026
The drive traverses the Bear River Mountains (a northern branch of the Wasatch), passing aspen groves, limestone cliffs, and the whitewater eddies of the Logan River along the way.
This divergence reflects both short-term irregularities in how fast Earth rotates, and a very gradual, long-term slowdown of Earth’s rotation, caused primarily by the Moon’s gravitational pull on Earth’s oceans.
—
Vahe Peroomian,
The Conversation,
8 Oct. 2026
The café rotates beans from young farmers across Colombia, allowing guests to experience the country’s diverse growing regions through different filter coffees.
Voting rights groups had challenged the effort, noting federal data includes errors that have led to citizens being wrongly removed from electoral rolls.
—
Patrick Marley,
Washington Post,
9 Oct. 2026
The restroom was missing a toilet paper dispenser, rolls of toilet paper were observed on a grab rail next to the toilet.
Designed for ranch work and rugged driving, the Terra pickup features green paint, 37-inch tires on 18-inch wheels, heavy-duty side steps, a front bull bar, a roof basket with lights, and expanded cargo-bed storage.
—
Chase Jordan
October 3,
Charlotte Observer,
3 Oct. 2026
Link launched on July 3 but quickly ran into electronic problems that took out two of the three reaction wheels needed to turn the spacecraft.