a. and sb. [f. L. vortic-, vortex VORTEX + -AL.]
A. adj. 1. Of motion: Like that of a vortex; rotating, eddying, whirling.
1653. H. More, Conject. Cabbal. (1713), 191. The Matter being coagulated,… and set upon Vortical Motion, Light dawned out in infinite parts of the World.
1692. Bentley, Boyle Lect., 226. This universal attraction or gravitation is … not a magnetical power, nor the effect of a vortical motion; those common attempts toward the explication of gravity.
1746. Phil. Trans., XLIV. 43. I have never been able to discern that vortical Motion, by which this Effect was said to be brought about.
1847. Emerson, Repr. Men, Swedenborg, Wks. (Bohn), I. 316. Descartes, taught by Gilbert’s magnet,… had filled Europe with the leading thought of vortical motion, as the secret of nature.
1881. G. Macdonald, Mary Marston, II. ii. 10. She made a sudden vortical gyration, and walked from the vile place.
1882. Minchin, Unipl. Kinemat., 155. Twice the product of the area of the curve and the vortical spin inside it.
2. Moving in a vortex; whirling round.
1728. Pemberton, Newton’s Philos., 231. The vortical fluid, by which he explains the motion of the planets.
1792. D. Lloyd, Voy. Life, 23.
| Till all their brain is vortical; and wreck’d— | |
| They sink o’erladen with anxiety. |
1860. Gosse, Rom. Nat. Hist., 165. Vibrating cilia … are more developed on these organs, which are only pushed out at the will of the little animal, when they form strong vortical currents.
B. sb. A vortical motion.
1864. Athenæum, 8 Oct., 465/2. The summary of the author’s theories is:—… That the magnetic vortical can be excited by means of spiral currents of electricity generally.
Hence Vortically adv., in a vortical manner.
1872. Proctor, Ess. Astron., xix. 230. If meteoric matter came in vortically around the equatorial parts of the sun.
1882. Minchin, Unipl. Kinemat., 183. Energy of Vortically moving Liquid.
