1 a shape or design, consisting of a continuous curved line that winds around a central point, with each curve further away from the centre:
The birds circled in a slow spiral above the house. * A spiral of smoke rose from the chimney.
2 a continuous harmful increase or decrease in sth, that gradually gets faster and faster:
the destructive spiral of violence in the inner cities * measures to control the inflationary spiral * the upward / downward spiral of sales * the vicious spiral of rising wages and prices
adjective moving in a continuous curve that winds around a central point:
a spiral staircase * A snail's shell is spiral in form.
spirally adverb
verb (-ll-, AmE usually -l-) [V] [usually +adv./prep.]
1 to move in continuous circles, going upwards or downwards:
Smoke spiralled into the sky. * The plane spiralled down to the ground.
2 to increase rapidly:
the spiralling cost of health care * Prices are spiralling out of control.
PHRASALVERBS
spiral down / downward to decrease rapidly
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for spiral is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is spiral a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, spiral is tagged as noun.
Does spiral appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — spiral appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
