Definition of "pinwheel"

pinwheel

noun
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.
  Quotations
  The sun blazing late in the afternoon, this long hilarious day like a pinwheel inexhaustibly throwing off sparks.
  1992, Joyce Carol Oates, Black Water, paperback edition, Penguin Books, page 125
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.
verb
third-person singular simple present pinwheels, present participle pinwheeling, simple past and past participle pinwheeled
1. (transitive, intransitive) To spin.
  Quotations
  Uncertainly, he stepped back, bumping into the short skirt of the seawall. He stumbled and pinwheeled his arms for balance.
  2009, David Wren, The Repossession, page 226
  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.
  2012, John Branch, “Snow Fall : The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek”, in New York Time‎