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; the form assumed by a fluid in such motion; a whirlpool; an
eddy.

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. Descartes attempted to account for the
formation of the universe, and the movements of the bodies composing
it, by a theory of vortices.