Meanings
present singular third person circumgyrates · participle present circumgyrating · participle past circumgyrated · past circumgyrated · alternative circumgyre
- intransitiveTo move around something.
Volyendesta is a watery planet, with a large, rapidly circumgyrating moon afflicting its inhabitants with a vast variety of unstable moods […]
1983, Doris Lessing, The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire, New York: Vintage, published 1984, page 71 more example
Only an incident in the sun’s system is eight small potatoes, called planets, circumgyrating at distances from 36 million to 2,791 million miles from the central sun.
1926, Baker Brownell, The New Universe: A Biography of the Worlds in Which We Live, New York: Van Nostrand, Book 1, Chapter 3, p. 47Synonyms: orbit
- intransitiveTo turn in a circle around an axis or fixed point.
Indirect power is the same as that which is sometimes called directive power or potestas directiva. For the word “direct,” one day, got up and turned its back upon itself. Its meaning has circumgyrated.
1874, Lord Robert Montagu, Expostulation in Extremis, London: Burns & Oates, page 46 - transitiveTo cause to turn in a circle around an axis or fixed point.
[…] a wheel, when circumgyrated upon its Axe, is sensibly moved, but not removed from one place to another.
1654, Walter Charleton, Physiologia Epicuro-Gassendo-Charltoniana, or, A Fabrick of Science Natural, Book 4, Chapter 2, Section 1, p. 4391 more example
[…] the one who impressed me most [was] a rumba dancer […] known for dancing to the rhythm of Cuban drums in a bikini with silver fringes while somehow circumgyrating at variable and independent speeds, each of her enormous tits […]
2005, Paquito D’Rivera, “Music and Musicians”, in Luis Tamargo, transl., My Sax Life, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, page 22 - intransitiveTo make circuits (around an area or space).
[…] the philosopher with his long white hair hanging down his shoulders, either writing in his library or “circumnavigating” round his garden […]
1899, Clement Boulton Roylance Kent, chapter 2, in The English Radicals: A Historical Sketch, London: Longmans, Green, page 2051 more example
[…] every motion of the small fish playing in its [the stream’s] pellucid pools, was as distinctly visible as those of the unfortunate goldfish one sometimes observes pensively circumgyrating in the interior of its enchanted globular ball in the shop-window.
1854, George Ballantine, chapter 13, in Autobiography of an English Soldier in the United States Army, New York: Stringer & Townsend, page 159 - intransitiveTo be formed into a bent or curved shape (around something).
1850, Oliver Tiffany, Canada Patent No. 298,“Certain improvement in the apparatus for warming houses,” Patents of Canada, from 1849 to 1855, Volume 2, Toronto, 1865, […] it circumgyrates round the stove, and exposes its large surfaces to the air warming space […]
- transitiveTo form into a bent or curved shape.
You can’t begin to try to tell him till you’ve clean circumgyrated yourself away down into his confidence.
1894, George Washington Cable, chapter 46, in John March, Southerner, New York: Scribner, page 2681 more example
[…] that […] all the Glands of the Body should be Congeries of various sorts of Vessels curl’d, circumgyrated and complicated together, whereby they give the Blood time to stop and separate through the Pores of the capillary Vessels into the Secretory ones,
1692, John Ray, The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation, 2nd edition, London: Samuel Smith, Part 2, p. 64
Synonyms & antonyms
verbTo move around something.
Origin
- Medieval Latincircumgȳrō
- Englishcircumgyrate
Borrowed from Medieval Latin circumgȳrō; equivalent to circum- + gyrate.
More words from Medieval Latin
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
circumgyrate. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/circumgyrate
“circumgyrate.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/circumgyrate. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “circumgyrate,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/circumgyrate.
Source: circumgyrate on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.