ETYM Latin vortex, vertex, -icis, from vortere, vertere, to turn. Related to Vertex.
1. A mass of fluid, especially of a liquid, having a whirling or circular motion tending to form a cavity or vacuum in the center of the circle, and to draw in towards the center bodies subject to its action.
2. The form assumed by a fluid in such motion; a whirlpool; an eddy.
3. (Seventeenth Century) A supposed collection of particles of very subtile matter, endowed with a rapid rotary motion around an axis which was also the axis of a sun or a planet.
4. Whirlpool.