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William Butler Yeats opens his 1920 poem, "The Second Coming," with the following lines: "Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer; / Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…." Often found in poetic or literary contexts as an alternative to the more familiar circle or spiral, gyre comes via the Latin gyrus from the Greek gyros, meaning "ring" or "circle." Gyre is also frequently encountered as an oceanographic term that refers to vast circular systems of ocean currents, such as the North Atlantic Gyre, a system of currents circling clockwise between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Gyre is also sometimes used of more localized vortices, such as those produced by whirlpools or tornadoes.
Examples of gyre in a Sentence
Doyle Rice, USA TODAY, 18 Sep. 2024
The gyre can be an early and late-season source of tropical development, Weather.com said.
—Doyle Rice, USA TODAY, 18 Sep. 2024
Polls taken since October 7th reflect a widening generational gyre: many older Jews have grown more intensely attached to Israel, but only about fifty per cent of those under thirty-five support military and financial aid to the country.
—Gideon Lewis-Kraus, The New Yorker, 9 Sep. 2024
Much of it is cheesy, such as an infinite-seeming gyre of dancing bears, a nightmare for us dancing-bear doubters, but some of the cheese is salvaged by cheek: a skeleton rising from a grave to ride a chopper through a trippy landscape.
—Nick Paumgarten, The New Yorker, 22 July 2024
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Dictionary Entries Near gyre
Cite this Entry
“Gyre.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gyre. Accessed 22 Nov. 2024.
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