volutation

English

Etymology

From Latin volutatio, from volutare (“to roll, wallow”), verb frequentative volvere, volutum (“to roll”).

Noun

volutation (plural volutations)

(obsolete) A circular movement; a rolling, wallowing, circulation or rotation.
- 1654, Walter Charleton, Physiologia Epicuro-Gassendo-Charltoniana, page 449:
  But, yet He hath left us rather a Confusion, than logical Discrimination of the species of Violent motion; for, Collision and Pulsion are one and the same thing; and Vection may be performed either by Pulsion or Traction, insomuch as the thing movent doth not forsake the thing pulsed, or drawn, but constantly adhæreth unto it; and as for Volutation; it is both Pulsion and Traction at once, as may be easily conceived by any man who seriously considers the manner thereof.
- 1658, Thomas Browne, “The Garden of Cyrus. […]. Chapter III.”, in Hydriotaphia, Urne-buriall, […] Together with The Garden of Cyrus, […], London: […] Hen[ry] Brome […], →OCLC, page 141:
  For ſphærical bodies move by fives, and every globular figure placed upon a plane, in direct volutation, returns to the firſt point of contaction in the firſt touch, accounting by the Axes of the Diameters or Cardinall points of the four quarters thereof.
- 1661, Robert Lovell, Sive Panzoologicomineralogia. Or a Compleat History of Animals and Minerals, page 406:
  […] so also if onely one foot appeares, and the hands are joyned to the thighs, or else they are to be pressed together by the midwife, so if the knees are foremost, using volutation; if the hands are foremost, they are to be reduced to the sides, as before, and the parts are to be relaxed; if only one hand be foremost, the foetus is to be put back, till the site be natural; […]
- 1704, Plutarch's Morals: Translated from the Greek by Several Hands, page 255:
  Nor is the Moon indeed mov'd by one only Motion, but is, as they are wont te call her […] three-way'd; performing her Course together according to Length, Breadth and Depth in the Zodiac, the first of which Motions Mathematicians call a direct Revolution; the second Volutation, or an oblique Winding and Wheeling in and out; and the third (I know not why) an Inequality; altho' they see that she has no Motion, uniform , setled and certain, in all her Circuits and Reversions.
- 1851 January, N. West, “Cabbala of the Jewish Doctors”, in Wellman's Literary Miscellany, volume 4, number 1, page 57:
  With respect to the volutation of spirits—a thing which the Greek Platonists call Metempsychosis or Transmigration—the Cabbalists say that the soul of Adam passed (voluatatem esse!) thro' the body of David, and thence to the Messiah.
- 1914, Henry Vaughan, edited by Leonard Cyril Martin, The Works of Henry Vaughan - Volume 2, page 389:
  To continue (after years of discretion) in this vanity, is an inexcusable desertion of pious sobriety: and to persist so to the end, is a wilful despising of Gods sacred exhortations, by a constant, sensual volutation or wallowing in impure thoughts and scurrilous conceits, which both defile their Authors, and as many more, as they are communicated to.