(of a stream or river) flow with a swirling motion and babbling sound.
a purling motion or sound: of all the rivers I have known, it is to you I will always return, you who empties herself into all oceans at once. Less a purl, more a roaring rush.
Guglielmini’s profile of speeds in a river (*Aquarum fluentium mensura*), late 17th Century. Taken from Bertoloni Meli, Domenico, *Thinking with Objects, The Transformation of Mechanics in the Seventeenth Century* John Hopkins University Press: Baltimore, 2006.
