noun

• (figuratively) Anything that involves constant violent or chaotic activity around some centre.
  "It’s hard to imagine that there is any major American clothing brand that does not have a store in the consumer vortex that is East Hampton; […]"
• (figuratively) Anything that inevitably draws surrounding things into its current.
  "In early youth, the living drama acted around me, drew my heart and soul into its vortex."
• (historical) A supposed collection of particles of very subtle matter, endowed with a rapid rotary motion around an axis which was also the axis of a sun or planet; part of a Cartesian theory accounting for the formation of the universe, and the movements of the bodies composing it.
  "Novv ſhou'd it happen that any of theſe Sun-like Bodies in the Centers of the ſeveral Vortices ſhou'd be ſo incruſtated and vveaken'd, as to be carried about in the Vortex of the true Sun, if it vvere of leſs Solidity, or leſs capable of Motion than the Globules, tovvards the extremity of the Solar Vortex, then it vvou'd deſcend tovvard the Sun, till it met vvith Globules of the ſame Solidity, and capable of the ſame degree of Motion vvith it, and being fixt there, it vvou'd for ever be carried about by the Motion of the Vortex, vvithout either approaching to, or receding from the Sun, and ſo become a Planet."
• (zoology) Any of numerous species of small Turbellaria belonging to Vortex and allied genera.

verb

• (chemistry) To mix using a vortex mixer.