tourbillon
English edit
Etymology edit
Borrowed from French tourbillon (“whirlwind”).
Pronunciation edit
Noun edit
tourbillon (plural tourbillons)
- (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.
- A whirlwind.
- A kind of firework that gyrates in the air.
- Any part of a machine with a spiral movement.
Translations edit
rotating frame, containing the escapement of a clock
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whirlwind
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kind of firework that gyrates in the air
any part of a machine with a spiral movement
Anagrams edit
French edit
Etymology edit
From Old French torbeil + -on.
Pronunciation edit
Noun edit
tourbillon m (plural tourbillons)
Derived terms edit
Descendants edit
- → English: tourbillon
- → Romanian: turbion
Further reading edit
- “tourbillon”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.