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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
whirlpool
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
bath
▪ Its two suites boasted whirlpool baths in which three could sit comfortably and four even more so.
▪ All fittings are gold-plated with marbled surrounds to the double basins, and a whirlpool bath.
▪ Double room with whirlpool bath £6.50.
▪ A whirlpool bath and relaxing sun-beds are available for hire.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Its two suites boasted whirlpool baths in which three could sit comfortably and four even more so.
▪ Just like that, she was sucked into the whirlpool that was threatening to swallow the Olympics.
▪ Outside, there is a sun terrace, small pool, children's pool and whirlpool with sea views.
▪ The whirlpools and other necessities are located in a smaller room.
▪ They hope to build eight single bedrooms with flats for families and a possible leisure complex with a swimming pool and whirlpool.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Whirlpool

Whirlpool \Whirl"pool`\, n.

  1. An eddy or vortex of water; a place in a body of water where the water moves round in a circle so as to produce a depression or cavity in the center, into which floating objects may be drawn; any body of water having a more or less circular motion caused by its flowing in an irregular channel, by the coming together of opposing currents, or the like.

  2. A sea monster of the whale kind. [Obs.]
    --Spenser.

    The Indian Sea breedeth the most and the biggest fishes that are; among which the whales and whirlpools, called ``bal[ae]n[ae],'' take up in length as much as four . . . arpents of land.
    --Holland.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
whirlpool

1520s, from whirl (v.) + pool (n.1). Old English had hwyrfepol and wirfelmere.

Wiktionary
whirlpool

n. 1 A swirling body of water. 2 turmoil, or agitated excitement.

WordNet
whirlpool
  1. n. a powerful circular current of water (usually the resulting of conflicting tides) [syn: vortex, maelstrom]

  2. v. flow in a circular current, of liquids [syn: eddy, purl, swirl, whirl]

Wikipedia
Whirlpool

A whirlpool is a body of swirling water produced by the meeting of opposing currents. The vast majority of whirlpools are not very powerful and very small whirlpools can easily be seen when a bath or a sink is draining. More powerful ones in seas or oceans may be termed maelstroms. Vortex is the proper term for any whirlpool that has a downdraft.

In oceans, in narrow straits, with fast flowing water, whirlpools are normally caused by tides; there are few stories of large ships ever being sucked into such a maelstrom, although smaller craft are in danger. Smaller whirlpools also appear at the base of many waterfalls. In the case of powerful waterfalls, like Niagara Falls, these whirlpools can be quite strong.

Basically, it is generated due to the "convergence of opposing forces". According to James Kenny the definition is: "The maelstrom arises as a result of a dramatic discontinuity in the ocean floor that disturbs the tidal flow, allowing a rising tide to begin its inflow well before the preceding tide has ebbed. The consequence, of course, is a confusion of flows, generating a rotary".

Whirlpool (disambiguation)

A whirlpool is a swirling body of water. It may also refer to:

Whirlpool (cryptography)

In computer science and cryptography, Whirlpool (sometimes styled WHIRLPOOL) is a cryptographic hash function. It was designed by Vincent Rijmen (co-creator of the Advanced Encryption Standard) and Paulo S. L. M. Barreto, who first described it in 2000. The hash has been recommended by the NESSIE project. It has also been adopted by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) as part of the joint ISO/IEC 10118-3 international standard.

Whirlpool (website)

Whirlpool is an Australian broadband user web site, started in 1998 by founder Simon Wright. Since then, it has grown significantly with over 700,000 registered accounts while remaining independent.

Whirlpool (Some Velvet Sidewalk album)

Whirlpool is the fourth album by Some Velvet Sidewalk.

Whirlpool (Chapterhouse album)

Whirlpool is the debut album by British shoegazing band Chapterhouse. The album was reissued in 2006, on the label Cherry Red, with seven bonus tracks taken from three EPs (Freefall, Sunburst, and Pearl) released in the same time frame as the album. The Cherry Red reissue also included, for the first time, lyrics to all of the songs. The album spent 3 weeks in the UK Album chart in 1991, peaking at number 23.

Whirlpool (1934 film)

Whirlpool ( 1934) is a drama film directed by Roy William Neill, starring Jack Holt and Jean Arthur. Buck Rankin (Holt), a carnival owner is convicted of manslaughter for the death of a man killed in a fight.

Whirlpool (1949 film)

Whirlpool is a 1949 film noir thriller directed by Otto Preminger and written by Ben Hecht and Andrew Solt, adapted from Guy Endore's novel Methinks the Lady. The film stars Gene Tierney, Richard Conte, José Ferrer and Charles Bickford, and features Constance Collier in her final film role. Due to anti-British statements Hecht had recently made regarding their involvement in Israel, UK prints of the film replaced his credit with a pseudonym, Lester Barstow.

The drama combines crime drama with psychological thriller (the heroine is controlled by a murderous hypnotist) and melodrama, as the central character's marriage is threatened.

Four years later, Conte starred in The Blue Gardenia, which has a strikingly similar plot, but replaces the psychoanalysis angle with a more straightforward procedural storyline.

Usage examples of "whirlpool".

I take my dick-sized bonk pill and writhe in a whirlpool of Vitamin C.

Blaise, one of six hydrotherapy rooms equipped with whirlpool baths the size of small swimming pools.

And within that whirlpool of inchoate pain, the horror of the impending encounter with the enemy began to metastasize into something else.

There are more reefs and skerries and underwater rocks and overfalls and whirlpools and tidal races in twenty miles there than in the whole of the rest of Scotland.

In the lee of the islands the loch was black as midnight but elsewhere it was a seething boiling white, the waters wickedly swirling, churning, spinning in evil-looking whirlpools as it passed across overfalls or forced its way through the narrow channels between the islands or between the islands and the shore.

There were no waves as such, just a bubbling swirling seething maelstrom of whirlpools, overfalls and races, running no way and every way, gleaming boiling white in the overfalls and races, dark and smooth and evil in the hearts of the whirlpools.

Fabre thus agrees with Pasteur, who in the world of the infinitely little shows us the same antagonisms, the same vital competition, the same eternal movement of flux and reflux, the same whirlpool of life, which is extinguished only to reappear: tending always towards an equilibrium which is incessantly destroyed.

The waves of delight that ran through her, the melting joy that seemed to pull her into a whirlpool of repletion, it was all totally unknown and yet it felt as right and wonderful as the most familiar ritual.

As the spinning waters reached the spot where Polgara stood, she began to be drawn toward the deadly whirlpool and the slavering demon still whirling in its center.

Destination spas are usually located in spacious and nurturing settings, such as the pristine islands of Hawaii, the mountains of Colorado, a remote country estate in Vermont, or a spacious manor in Europe, where hydrotherapy techniques such as sauna and whirlpool remain popular.

Point are the origin of the Merry Men of Mey, while off the island of Stroma occurs the whirlpool of the Swalchie, and off the Orcadian Swona is the vortex of the Wells of Swona.

Down this ticklish descent the canoe had glanced, amid fragments of broken rock, whirlpools, foam, and furious tossings of the element, which an uninstructed eye would believe menaced inevitable destruction to an object so fragile.

He had not finished the words, when we heard a crashing noise, the bolts gave way, and the boat, torn from its groove, was hurled like a stone from a sling into the midst of the whirlpool.

As Domini and Androvsky rode into this whirlpool of humanity, above which the sky was red like a great wound, it flowed and eddied round them, making them its centre.

And all the while cold fingers of damp vapor clutched and picked at me, and that eldritch, damnable whistling shrieked fiendishly above all the alternations of babel and silence in the whirlpools of darkness around.