inspiral
inspiral adjective: describing the paths of a pair of astronomical bodies (e.g. binary stars or black holes) that are spiralling in towards each other, losing energy to gravitational waves.
Adjective
inspiral (not comparable)
- Describing the paths of a pair of astronomical bodies (e.g. binary stars or black holes) that are spiralling in towards each other, losing energy to gravitational waves.
Noun
inspiral (plural inspirals)
- The path of such a body.
Verb
inspiral (third-person singular simple present inspirals, present participle (US) inspiraling or (UK) inspiralling, simple past and past participle (US) inspiraled or (UK) inspiralled)
Forms of inspiral
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | inspirals |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | inspirals |
| present participle US | inspiraling |
| present participle UK | inspiralling |
| past participle US | inspiraled |
| past US | inspiraled |
| past participle UK | inspiralled |
| past UK | inspiralled |
Origin of inspiral
From in- + spiral.
Questions about inspiral
- What does inspiral mean?
- Inspiral means describing the paths of a pair of astronomical bodies (e.g. binary stars or black holes) that are spiralling in towards each other, losing energy to gravitational waves.
- What part of speech is inspiral?
- Inspiral can be an adjective, a noun or a verb.
Words near inspiral in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: inspiral (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “inspiral.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/inspiral. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.