pinwheel

From pin +‎ wheel.^[1]

pinwheel (plural pinwheels)

1. An artificial flower with a stem, usually plastic, for children: the flower spins round in the wind, like a small paper windmill.
2. A firework which forms a kind of spinning wheel.
   • 1992, Joyce Carol Oates, Black Water, paperback edition, Penguin Books, page 125:

     The sun blazing late in the afternoon, this long hilarious day like a pinwheel inexhaustibly throwing off sparks.

3. A cogged (toothed) gear.
4. A pastry which resembles the artificial flowers above, with some filling or topping in the center.
5. Any food product consisting of layers (for example of pastry and sweet filling, or of bread and meat) rolled into a spiral, visually similar to a cinnamon roll.

• pinwheel flower (Tabernaemontana divaricata)
• pinwheel mushroom (Marasmius rotula)
• pinwheel sandwich
• Wartenberg pinwheel

pinwheel (third-person singular simple present pinwheels, present participle pinwheeling, simple past and past participle pinwheeled)

1. (ambitransitive) To spin.

   The damaged fighter jet pinwheeled out of control, the g-forces pushing the pilot so hard he couldn't reach the ejection switch.

   • 2009, David Wren, The Repossession, page 226:

     Uncertainly, he stepped back, bumping into the short skirt of the seawall. He stumbled and pinwheeled his arms for balance.

   • 2012 December 26, John Branch, “Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek”, in The New York Times‎^[1], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 14 November 2013:

     The laws of physics and chemistry transform a meadow of fine powder into a wreckage of icy chunks. Saugstad’s pinwheeling body would freeze into whatever position it was in the moment the snow stopped.