Stirred or agitated something vigorously, like churning butter or waves churning during a storm.
From Old English cyrnan (to make butter). The word originally described the specific action of making butter in a churn, then expanded to mean any violent stirring motion.
Medieval butter-making was so laborious that 'churning' became a metaphor for hard work—and now we use 'churn rate' in tech to describe how many customers are leaving a company, keeping the meaning of 'exhausting work'!
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