whirligig

IPA: wˈɝɫɪgˈɪg

Anything that whirls or spins around, such as a toy top or a merry-go-round.
A device incorporating spinning, wind-driven propellers or pinwheels, used as whimsical outdoor decoration in a garden or on a porch.
A whirligig beetle.
(historical) A device for punishing prisoners, comprising a wooden cage that rapidly spins around to induce nausea.

Examples of "whirligig" in Sentences

It would seem the whirligig of time does not, alas, bring its revenges.
You also do not need a "whirligig," or other device, to deliver the water to your grain bed.
Solar wind particles flow along the ropes in whirligig trajectories leading from the sun to Earth.
To repeat: Solar wind particles flow along the ropes in whirligig trajectories leading from the sun to Earth.
He thought all the evening; or rather thought and fancy took a kind of whirligig dance, where it was hard to tell which was which.
When speech fails – and the speech here is sometimes meagre, sometimes over-emphatic and quite often oddly accented – a whirligig of activity takes over.
The Ferris wheel fell over onto its side with a rending crash, the chains holding the swings to the whirligig snapped, and the carousel horses grew old and gray and withered like overripe fruit on their poles.
Ms. Li's sound laces rock with electronic energy and a nattering sense of whirligig rhythm, and her voice alternates between coy coos and throaty bellows that promise to tart up the night sky over Central Park.
For those who do not know and may think that a "whirligig" is some sort of child's toy, it is actually an object that spins, turns or has at least one moving part to indicate wind direction -- much like a weather vane.