Word.ws English Dictionary

spiralling

spiralling is the present participle and gerund of spiral.

Meaning of spiral

Verb

spiral (third-person singular simple present spirals, present participle (US) spiraling or (UK) spiralling, simple past and past participle (US) spiraled or (UK) spiralled)

  1. (intransitive) To move along the path of a spiral or helix.
    • The falling leaves spiralled down from the tree.
    Synonyms:
    billow, gyrate, spire
  2. (transitive) To cause something to spiral.
    • You need to learn how to spiral a ball.
  3. (figuratively, intransitive) To increase continually.
    • Her debts were spiralling out of control.
  4. (intransitive) To decline mentally.
    • She spiralled into a deep depression.

See all 9 meanings of spiral

Noun

spiralling (plural spirallings)

  1. Movement in a spiral.
    • Dear witch, dear devious dove, I halfway know / The meaning of these giddy spirallings.c. 1949-1950, Theodore Roethke, In the Bush of her Bones

Forms of spiralling

pluralspirallings

Phrases with spiralling

Questions about spiralling

What does spiralling mean?
Spiralling means movement in a spiral.
What is spiralling the present participle and gerund of?
Spiralling is the present participle and gerund of spiral.
What part of speech is spiralling?
Spiralling is a noun.
What is the plural of spiralling?
The plural of spiralling is spirallings.

Words near spiralling in the dictionary

  1. spiralled out
  2. spiraller
  3. spirallers
  4. spirallike
  5. spirallikeness
  6. spiralling
  7. spiralling out
  8. spirallings
  9. spirally
  10. spirals
  11. spirals of Archimedes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: spiralling (page history and authors); spiral (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.

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Cite this entry: “spiralling.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/spiralling. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.