rowel
Americannoun
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a small wheel with radiating points, forming the extremity of a spur.
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Veterinary Medicine. a piece of leather or the like inserted beneath the skin of a horse or other animal to promote drainage of an infection.
verb (used with object)
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to prick or urge with a rowel.
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Veterinary Medicine. to insert a rowel in.
noun
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a small spiked wheel attached to a spur
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obsolete vet science a piece of leather or other material inserted under the skin of a horse to act as a seton and allow drainage
verb
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to goad (a horse) using a rowel
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obsolete vet science to insert a rowel in (the skin of a horse) to allow drainage
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of rowel
1350–1400; Middle English rowelle < Middle French ruelle, Old French roel < Late Latin rotella, equivalent to Latin rot ( a ) wheel + -ella -elle
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Johnny took off his spurs and showed the silversmith a broken rowel.
From "Johnny Tremain" by Esther Hoskins Forbes
A rowel is to be made in the dewlap by taking a skein of hemp, tow, or twisted packthread, a foot long, and as thick as a man's thumb.
From On the cattle plague: or, Contagious typhus in horned cattle. Its history, origin, description, and treatment by Bourguignon, Honor?
The rowel pin is a screw pin; thus the rowel can be changed at pleasure, and a sharp or a blunt one fitted as is required by the horse one rides.
From Ladies on Horseback Learning, Park-Riding, and Hunting, with Hints upon Costume, and Numerous Anecdotes by Lambert, Nannie
Upon his spurs all gory Twelve gilded birdies bore he; Each time with the rowel he pricked his horse The birdies sang with all their force.
From Ulf Van Yern and Other Ballads by Borrow, George Henry
The rowel is one and a half or two inches in diameter, and the points are about twenty-five or thirty inches long.
From Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests by Ross, Thomasina
Hart roweled Mondale from end to end of the country, leaving the Democratic candidate wounded and bleeding.
From Time Magazine Archive
What roweled the independents was their firm conviction that the scheduled lines could do the job only with the help of their Government "subsidies" in carrying air mail.
From Time Magazine Archive
Last fortnight Pennsylvania's State Board of Medical Licensure had been roweled into an investigation which may cost Schireson his license.�
From Time Magazine Archive
But decency did not explain or defend the fact that he roweled his willing pinto all the way, and arrived in a state of mind that was the reverse of felicitation.
From The Fifth Ace by Gage, George W.
She looked into his face in a way that roweled the man.
From Red Fleece by Comfort, Will Levington
An obsession of haste spurred her with the roweling of suspense and with the companionship of her troubled thoughts she walked on and on.
From A Pagan of the Hills by Buck, Charles Neville
The old schooner scrunched her way past the Olenia, roweling the yacht's glossy paint and smearing her with tar and slime.
From Blow The Man Down A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 by Day, Holman
Far to the west a faint report was heard and Pete knew that Skinny was roweling the lathered sides of his straining horse.
From Hopalong Cassidy by Mulford, Clarence E.
Very rarely did The Kid use the spurs, but he used them now, roweling Blizzard desperately.
From Kid Wolf of Texas by Powers, Paul S. (Paul Sylvester)
The thought of it spurred him every waking hour, roweling his wounded pride cruelly.
From Gunsight Pass How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West by Raine, William MacLeod
The silence seems a solid thing, shot through with wolfish woe; And rowelled by the eager stars the skies vault vastly back, And man seems but a little mite on that weird-lit plateau.
From Rhymes of a Rolling Stone by Service, Robert W. (Robert William)
Cursing the ancestry of such heartless jokers, Elias rowelled his horse's flanks with the sharp corners of his stirrups, and went off at a furious gallop.
From The Valley of the Kings by Pickthall, Marmaduke William
Under the plates the mail hose show themselves and the heels have rowelled spurs.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Slice 6 "Armour Plates" to "Arundel, Earls of" by Various
He had been leaning against the front wall of the National, thoughtfully removing some more of its paint by scraping it with the big rowelled Mexican spurs which he affected.
From The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings by Burnham, Margaret
"Oh, get along, you dromedary!" she muttered and rowelled her horse sharply.
From The Last Straw by Titus, Harold
What no system can bear indefinitely is the continual rowelling of its vitals by those who are trying to get rich.
From Time Magazine Archive
But Tom horse, facing homeward, needed none of the rowelling that he had demanded on the way up.
From Judith of the Godless Valley by Morrow, Honoré
The red-sashed, silver-spurred Buck Bellew reined in closer to his companions, rowelling his little active "paint" horse as he did so, till it jumped and curvetted.
From The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings by Burnham, Margaret
Only the most merciless of rowelling could goad the jaded beast out of a jog except for short spurts.
From Bloom of Cactus by Coleman, Ralph P. (Ralph Pallen)
At that moment Lord Darby dashed up, his horse blown, its sides bloody with rowelling and flecked with foam.
From Beatrix of Clare by Underwood, Clarence F.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
