What's the difference between teetotum and whirligig?
Teetotum
Definition:
(n.) A child's toy, somewhat resembling a top, and twirled by the fingers.
Example Sentences:
Whirligig
Definition:
(n.) A child's toy, spun or whirled around like a wheel upon an axis, or like a top.
(n.) Anything which whirls around, or in which persons or things are whirled about, as a frame with seats or wooden horses.
(n.) A mediaeval instrument for punishing petty offenders, being a kind of wooden cage turning on a pivot, in which the offender was whirled round with great velocity.
(n.) Any one of numerous species of beetles belonging to Gyrinus and allied genera. The body is firm, oval or boatlike in form, and usually dark colored with a bronzelike luster. These beetles live mostly on the surface of water, and move about with great celerity in a gyrating, or circular, manner, but they are also able to dive and swim rapidly. The larva is aquatic. Called also weaver, whirlwig, and whirlwig beetle.
Example Sentences:
(1) The phenotype of homozygous wrl mutants suggests that the whirligig product plays a role in postmeiotic spermatid differentiation, possibly in organizing the microtubules of the sperm flagellar axoneme.
(2) The whirligig locus appears to be haploinsufficient for male fertility.
(3) As a 40-year-old engineering graduate, Tsipras is wide open to the accusation of being an “amateur politician” – although any Briton tired of being ruled by our whirligig of zombified former spads might fancy a little conviction, however amateurish.
(4) The mutant nc4 allele of whirligig (3-54.4) of Drosophila melanogaster fails to complement mutations in an alpha-tubulin locus, alpha 1t, mutations in a beta-tubulin locus, B2t, or a mutation in the haywire locus.
(5) McGuinness was mulling the whirligig of history that had brought him to the very place where Sinn Féin’s Michael Collins signed the Anglo-Irish treaty in 1921 with David Lloyd George.
(6) You've had a whirligig few years since leaving the chief executive's job at Barking and Dagenham.