[f. as prec. + -ING2.] That whirls, in various senses of the verb; turning (rapidly) round, rotating, revolving, circling (swiftly); eddying; moving impetuously, etc.
1382. Wyclif, 2 Peter ii. 17. Cloudis … driuun with whirlinge wijndis.
1387. Trevisa, Higden (Rolls), II. 51. Woodnesse of … whirlynge water casteþ vp … grete hepes of grauel.
c. 1450. Mirk’s Festial, 138. What by þondyr and by layte,… by whyrlyng-wynde, by mystes.
1545. [see PLAT sb.2 7].
1572. Bossewell, Armorie, II. 90 b. The blinde goddesse Fortune, with her doble visage, and whirlynge whele.
1581. Mulcaster, Positions, xix. (1888), 80. Children when they had their whirling gigges vnder the deuotion of their scourges.
1622. J. Taylor (Water P.), Farew. Tower-Bottles, A 2 b. The whirling wheele of fickle Fate.
1630. Bp. Hall, Occas. Medit., § 13. That whirling Globe of earth.
1697. Dryden, Æneis, X. 1264. A whirling Dart he sent.
1762. Cowper, To Miss Macartney, 34. Some Alpine mountain … Thus braves the whirling blast.
1839. Ure, Dict. Arts, 1296. The whirling public so blindly follows fashionable caprice in the choice of a carriage.
1872. Yeats, Techn. Hist. Comm., 273. The whirling and complicated machinery.
1885. T. P. Hughes, Dict. Islam, 118/1. [The Maulawīyah] are called by Europeans … the ‘dancing,’ or ‘whirling’ darweshes.
b. fig.
1602. Shaks., Ham., I. v. 133 (Qo. 1). These are but wild and wherling [1623 hurling] words, my Lord.
1633. Bp. Hall, Occas. Medit., § 140. Those hurrying and whirling judgements of God.
1684. Creech, Odes Hor., III. xxx. Nor whirling Time, nor flight of Years.
1853. Dickens, Bleak Ho., xxxvi. I cannot say what was in my whirling thoughts.
1855. Milman, in Mem. (1900), 189. Quiet, though in the midst of the whirling city.
c. Special collocations: whirling blue, whirling dun, names of artificial flies used in angling; whirling-board = whirling-table (a); whirling chair, a chair contrived to rotate rapidly, used in the treatment of insane patients; whirling-machine = whirling-table (a); whirling plant, the ‘telegraph-plant,’ Desmodium gyrans (see TELEGRAPH sb. 8); whirling-table, (a) a machine consisting essentially of a table contrived to revolve rapidly, used for experiments or demonstrations in dynamics or other branches of science; (b) a horizontally rotating disk in a potter’s lathe, carrying a mold which shapes the inside of a plate, cup, or other circular piece of ware, while the outside is shaped by a templet above it.
1747. Bowlker, Art Angling, 73. The little *Whirling Blue…. this Fly is only to be Fish’d with … in warm Weather.
1764. J. Ferguson, Lect., ii. 19. Which weight … will draw the ball from the edge of the *whirling-board to its center.
1799. Underwood, Dis. Childhood (ed. 4), II. 50. Exciting vertigo by placing the patient in a *whirling chair.
1676. Cotton, Angler, II. vii. 61. About the twelfth of this Month [April] comes in the Flie call’d the *whirling Dun.
1843. Penny Cycl., XXVII. 326/1. *Whirling-machine is an apparatus … for the purpose of determining the resistance of the air.
1866. Treas. Bot., 1232/1. *Whirling Plant, Desmodium gyrans.
1764. J. Ferguson, Lect., ii. 18. The *whirling-table is a machine contrived for shewing experiments of this nature.
1830. Kater & Lardner, Mech., viii. 100. An apparatus called a whirling table … for the purpose of exhibiting illustrations of the laws of centrifugal force.
1840. Penny Cycl., XVIII. 473/1. The workman stands at a bench provided with a whirling-table…, which has its motion given by a horizontal pulley or jigger.
1879. Prescott, Sp. Telephone, 263. An attachment to the whirling-table for projecting sound-curves upon a screen.
Hence Whirlingly adv., with whirling movement (also fig.).
1812. W. Tennant, Anster F., II. lix. As they trip it whirlingly.
1902. S. E. White, Blazed Trail, viii. The forces of nature … so whirlingly contemptuous of puny human effort.
