Swirl

How to spell swirl

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce swirl

What does swirl mean?

1. verbTo move or cause to move in a twisting, circular pattern.
2. nounA twisting, curling movement or the curling pattern it leaves.

Swirl in a sentence

• verb

  She watched the milk swirl slowly into her coffee.

• noun

  A single swirl of cream decorated the top of the dessert.

• verb

  Strong winds made the fallen leaves swirl across the car park.

• noun

  The marble worktop showed a grey swirl running through the stone.

Where does swirl come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Swirl began life in late medieval Scots, where it described a whirling eddy in water. Its earliest recorded uses are northern and Scottish, and the form looks imitative, echoing the sound and motion of something spinning round and round. Scholars suspect a relationship with words for twisting and turning in the neighbouring Germanic languages, including Dutch and Norwegian dialect terms, though no single parent word is firmly proven. By the time it spread into wider English use in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it had broadened from water alone to any twisting, curling movement, and later to the visible curl or pattern such motion leaves behind. The tidy spelling preserves the awkward bit for spellers: the unstressed vowel is written 'ir', not 'ur' or 'er', so swirl rhymes with whirl and twirl and shares their spelling family.

How the word is built

• swir- (twist/eddy, of Scots origin)
• -l