tourbillon
English
editEtymology
editBorrowed from French tourbillon (“whirlwind”).
Pronunciation
editNoun
edittourbillon (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
editrotating frame, containing the escapement of a clock
|
whirlwind
|
kind of firework that gyrates in the air
any part of a machine with a spiral movement
Anagrams
editFrench
editEtymology
editFrom Old French torbeil + -on.
Pronunciation
editNoun
edittourbillon m (plural tourbillons)
Derived terms
editDescendants
edit- → English: tourbillon
- → Romanian: turbion
Further reading
edit- “tourbillon”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.
Categories:
- English terms borrowed from French
- English terms derived from French
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- French terms derived from Old French
- French terms suffixed with -on
- French 3-syllable words
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- French countable nouns
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- fr:Physics