rowel

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English

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Etymology

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From Middle English rowel, rowell, rowelle, from Old French roel, roiele (compare modern French rouelle), from Late Latin rotella, diminutive of Latin rota (wheel). Doublet of rotella.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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rowel (plural rowels)

  1. The small spiked wheel on the end of a spur.
    • 1819, Walter Scott, “Ivanhoe”, in The Complete Works of Sir Walter Scott, volume 3, published 1833, page 121:
      The deep and sharp rowels with which Ivanhoe’s heels were now armed, began to make the worthy Prior repent of his courtesy, [] .
    • 1939, Henry Miller, The Cosmological Eye, page 246:
      The dry desert of my native land, her men grey and gaunt, their spines twisted, their feet shod with rowel and spur.
    • 1973, Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, published 2013, page 892:
      The Lone Ranger will storm in at the head of a posse, rowels tearing blood from the stallion’s white hide, to find his young friend, innocent Dan, swinging from a tree limb by a broken neck.
    • 1992, Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses, page 62:
      He nodded at the Americans. Buena suerte, he said. He put the long rowels of his spurs to the horse and they moved on.
  2. A little flat ring or wheel on a horse's bit.
  3. A roll of hair, silk, etc., passed through the flesh of a horse in the manner of a seton in human surgery.

Derived terms

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Translations

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Verb

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rowel (third-person singular simple present rowels, present participle roweling or rowelling, simple past and past participle roweled or rowelled)

  1. (transitive) To use a rowel on (something), especially to drain fluid.
  2. (transitive) To fit with spurs.
  3. (transitive) To apply the spur to.
    to rowel a horse
  4. (transitive, figurative) To incite; to goad.
    (Can we find and add a quotation of Rudyard Kipling to this entry?)
    • 1941, Thomas Bell, Out of This Furnace, page 240:
      He would have been completely ignorant of what was going on if Frank, periodically roweled by the viciously anti-labor stand of the Pittsburgh newspapers, hadn't felt the need of an audience.

Translations

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Anagrams

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