Meanings
- not comparablerareInvolving turning oneself around: rotating or circuitous.
“Suppose I should get up a ballet, drill the girls myself, and learn ’em all the peritropal movements; see that their skirts are short enough, and that they are graceful while dancing.[…]”
1872, William Henry Thomes, chapter IV, in Life in the East Indies, Boston: Lee & Shepard, page 1422 more examples
Our three-decade friend, Joe A. Kirgan, late of the Milford Gazette, has established a paper at Frost, Navarro county. Joe is a regular peritropal and peripatetic genius, never lasting more than three months in one place.
1888 October 27, The Columbus Citizen, quotee, “The State Press”, in The Galveston Daily News, volume 47, number 183, page 10My peritropal jaunts were propelled by the sad and dreary loneliness of my hotel room in a downtown that was a shrunken shadow of what it was when Billy Phelan “made a right turn into the warmth of the stairs to Louie’s pool room,[…]”
2008, Peter Quinn, Looking for Jimmy: A Search for Irish America, Woodstock, NY: The Overlook Press, →ISBN, page 145 - archaicnot comparablebiologyHaving the axis of the seed perpendicular to the axis of the pericarp to which it is attached.
Origin
- Ancient Greekπερί“around”
- Englishperitropal
From Ancient Greek περί (perí, “around”) + τρόπος (trópos, “turn”) + -al.
More words from Ancient Greek
Full word history & related roots →Rhymes & wordplay
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Cite this entry
peritropal. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/peritropal
“peritropal.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/peritropal. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “peritropal,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/peritropal.
Source: peritropal on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.