(figuratively) Anything that involves constant violent or chaotic activity around some centre.
(figuratively) Anything that inevitably draws surrounding things into its current.
(historical) A supposed collection of particles of very subtlematter, endowed with a rapid rotary motion around an axis which was also the axis of a sun or planet; part of a Cartesiantheory accounting for the formation of the universe, and the movements of the bodies composing it.
(zoology) Any of numerous species of small Turbellaria belonging to Vortex and allied genera.