tourbillon

plural tourbillons

1. hobbiesA rotating frame, containing the escapement of a clock or watch, that significantly compensates for the effects of gravity.

   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.

   2023 May 28, Brian Ng, “Is one of these students the next Breguet?”, in FT Weekend (HTSI section), London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 43

   1 more example

   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.

   2006, Thomas Pynchon, “Bilocations”, in Against the Day, New York, N.Y.: Penguin Press, →ISBN, page 457

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