tourbillon

Borrowed from French tourbillon (“whirlwind”).

• IPA^(key): /ˌtʊə(ɹ)bɪˈjɒn/

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.

• bunitrolol

From Old French torbeil +‎ -on.

• IPA^(key): /tuʁ.bi.jɔ̃/

• Audio

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tourbillon m (plural tourbillons)

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

• tourbillonnaire
• tourbillonner

• → English: tourbillon
• → Romanian: turbion

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