winding
/ˈwʌɪndɪŋ
/noun
1A twisting movement or course: the windings of the stream...
- And you learn all about the head for heights that you need if you are going to tackle one of the narrow maintenance paths that follows the tortuous windings of a levada.
- Everybody looked with curiosity on the miniature locomotive and wondered how it could tug a train loaded with 50 people up the windings of this steep and narrow little track for four miles.
- I'm thinking less of the huge, operatic rooms hung with stalactites, than the narrow windings that might end in a wall or a cliff or a small pool where tiny, blind fish swim.
Synonyms
twist, turn, turning, bend, loop, curve, zigzag, convolution, meander, meandering;
oxbow
rare anfractuosity, flexuosity
2A thing that winds or is wound round something.There are very fine wire windings around those heads, and if snagged while cleaning - then they are trashed....
- Engineers found a host of problems: damaging misalignments, cracked welds and broken webbing on the end-turn windings.
- There is no way they could have seen a golf ball before; I imagined them cutting one open for the first time, suspecting it was a grenade of some sort, and jumping back when the rubber windings started popping every which way.
2.1An electrical conductor that is wound round a magnetic material, especially one encircling part of the stator or rotor of an electric motor or generator or forming part of a transformer.It's kind of a slow-death situation; eventually that insulation breaks down and you have a dead short in the windings and a very expensive repair job....
- Each of the windings and diodes can fail at a time.
- When tape is unloaded, a ‘trickle’ current must pass through the windings.
adjective
Following a twisting or spiral course: our bedroom was at the top of a winding staircase...
- We walked for a long time, following winding paths carved by herds of cattle, through high meadows into an exotic place that seemed like a foreign land.
- The 12-mile route starts in Stratford's Bancroft Gardens at 1.30 pm and will follow a winding course to Long Marston.
- Late one afternoon we found ourselves motoring along an isolated stretch of road in Idaho, which followed the winding course of a river.
Synonyms
twisting and turning, full of twists and turns, meandering, windy, twisty, bending, curving, looping, zigzag, zigzagging, serpentine, sinuous, snaking, snaky, tortuous, convoluted;
circuitous, roundabout, indirect
rare anfractuous, flexuous, meandrous, serpentiform