adj, noun ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   A roundabout, traffic circle. Atlantic-Canada, New-England
2. 2
   electrical converter consisting of a synchronous machine that converts alternating to direct current or vice versa wordnet
3. 3
   Any of the clubs making up the international Rotary International movement for community service.
4. 4
   a road junction at which traffic streams circularly around a central island wordnet

Adjective

1. 1
   Capable of rotation. not-comparable

   "A rotary engine revolves the heads rather than having pistons go back and forth."

Adjective

1. 1
   describing a circle; moving in a circle wordnet
2. 2
   relating to or characterized by rotation wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

traffic circlerotationalroundaboutalternateambagiousascending

Example

More examples

"Do you remember that we had a phone with a rotary dial?"

Etymology

Attested mid 18th century, from Medieval Latin rotarius, from Latin rota (“wheel”).

Related phrases

rotary beaterrotary converterrotary dialrotary dialingrotary encoderrotary enginerotary evaporatorrotary phonerotary pressrotary printing pressrotary razorrotary saw

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.