Other forms: eddies
An eddy is a small whirling movement in water or air. An eddy behind the rock, eddies in the current, caught in an eddy.
Eddies form where a flow passes an obstruction and the water folds back on itself, which is why they sit behind rocks and bridge piers. Canoeists use them deliberately to rest out of the main current. In physics, eddy currents are loops of electric current induced in metal, and they are how induction hobs and some brakes work. Note eddy as a verb, meaning to swirl.
1nouneddyA small whirling movement in water or air.
“There is an eddy behind that rock big enough to sit a boat in.”
2verbswirlTo swirl in a small circling movement.
“Dust eddied across the empty square in the hot wind.”
eddy is a swirling movement.
Old English ed- was a prefix meaning back or again, and an eddy is water going back on itself. The prefix is otherwise entirely lost from English, surviving in this one word.
Old English
edēa
Middle English
eddy
English, today
eddy
Built from
From Middle English eddy, from Old English edēa, from und + ed-. From Middle English eddy, from Old English edēa, from ed- (“turning, back, reverse”) + ēa (“water”), equivalent to ed- + ea. Ultimately from Proto-Indo-European h₁é, and, consequently, cognate with Latin et. Related also to Danish ide (“eddy”), Swedish eda (“eddy”), Norwegian ida, ia, ea (“eddy”), Icelandic iða (“eddy”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire