tourbillon

English

Etymology

Borrowed from French tourbillon (“whirlwind”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˌtʊə(ɹ)bɪˈjɒn/

Noun

tourbillon (plural tourbillons)

1. (horology) A rotating frame, containing the escapement of a clock or watch, that attempts to compensate for the effects of gravity.
   • 2006, Thomas Pynchon, “Bilocations”, in Against the Day, New York, N.Y.: Penguin Press, →ISBN, page 457:

     Time was vulnerable to the force of gravity. So Breguet came up with the tourbillon, which isolated the balance wheel and escarpment off on a little platform of their own, geared to the third wheel, rotating about once a minute, assuming in the course of the day most positions in 3-D space relative to the gravity of the Earth, so the errors would cancel out and make time impervious to gravity.

   • 2023 May 28, Brian Ng, “Is one of these students the next Breguet?”, in FT Weekend, HTSI, page 43:

     In their final year, each student must make their own watch with a complication—from a tourbillon to a chiming mode to having a date display.

2. A whirlwind.
3. A kind of firework that gyrates in the air.
4. Any part of a machine with a spiral movement.

Translations

rotating frame, containing the escapement of a clock

• Dutch: tourbillon m
• Japanese: トゥールビヨン (tūrubiyon)
• Russian: турбийо́н (ru) m (turbijón)

whirlwind

• Asturian: torbolín m
• Bulgarian: вихрушка (bg) f (vihruška)
• Catalan: terbolí (ca) m
• Dutch: wervelwind (nl) m
• Spanish: torbellino (es) m

kind of firework that gyrates in the air

any part of a machine with a spiral movement

Anagrams

• bunitrolol

French

Etymology

From Old French torbeil +‎ -on.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /tuʁ.bi.jɔ̃/

• Audio:

  (file)

Noun

tourbillon m (plural tourbillons)

1. whirlwind
2. eddy, whirlpool
3. (physics) vortex
4. (figuratively) whirl, whirlwind, maelstrom
5. tourbillon

Derived terms

• tourbillonnaire
• tourbillonner

Descendants

• → English: tourbillon
• → Romanian: turbion

Further reading

• “tourbillon”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.