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Can this word mean a whorl of hair? I saw it in a story Cowboy Chicken Comes to Town. The context was kids making fun of a boy because he had four tourbillions on his head. I can't find a literal English definition that makes sense, so I am guessing the sense "whirlpool".

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Craig,
There is a poem in french about butterflies who tourbillon (no i after the double ll btw) and they wouldn't be found in water, so whirlwind is one translation, and according to my dictionary whirlpool is another, as is whirl.....so turning around and around is another. Maybe applied to the butterflies it means fluttering.
Pam
tourbillon can essentially be a whorl/whirl of anything. It's commonly used for wind/water (hence possible translations like "whirlwind", "eddy", "vortex"), but it could be essentially anything. It's also used, for example, for the "whorls" of your fingerprints.
It must be the whirl on the top of your head where the hair starts.

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