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
Row′el-head, the axis on which a rowel turns; Row′eling-need′le, a needle used for inserting a rowel or seton; Row′eling-scis′sors, a farrier's instrument for inserting rowels; Row′el-spur, a spur having several radiating points.
From Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary (part 3 of 4: N-R) by Various
It is not started by slight scratches, but strike the rowel deep, and there is a purpose in it that nothing can conquer or restrain.
From A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention For Proposing Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, Held at Washington, D.C., in February, A.D. 1861 by Chittenden, L. E. (Lucius Eugene)
I measured one which was six inches in the diameter of the rowel, and the rowel itself contained upward of thirty points.
From With the World's Great Travellers, Volume 1 by Various
It is reddish, rounded at the toe, and carries a spur at least a pound in weight, with a rowel three inches in diameter!
From The Scalp Hunters by Stewart, F.A.
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
Hart roweled Mondale from end to end of the country, leaving the Democratic candidate wounded and bleeding.
From Time Magazine Archive
He roweled Pronto and, with Sam even in the jump, they galloped through the half-ring without opposition.
From Rimrock Trail by Dunn, J. Allan, (Joseph Allan)
As Mose roweled him he kicked with both hind feet as if to tear the cinch from his belly.
From The Eagle's Heart by Garland, Hamlin
Hike it, cowboys, For the range away On the back of a bronc of steel, With a careless flirt Of the raw-hide quirt And a dig of a roweled heel!
From Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads by Various
Then another rider was on the trail: Tom Beck, roweling his horse, fanning his shoulders with the rein ends, crying aloud to him for speed, his gun in his holster, a useless thing.
From The Last Straw by Titus, Harold
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)
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 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
It was still another spur roweling me back to the ring of combat.
From The Prairie Mother by Becher, Arthur E.
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
A book rowelled the small of Klinker's back as he reclined upon the pillow, and plucking it from beneath him, he glanced at the back of it.
From Queed by Crosby, Raymond Moreau
Here, in these desolate barren hills, twenty miles from the nearest human being, it stirred and woke and rowelled him to be moving on.
From McTeague by Norris, Frank
Around you smoky clouds like ogres tower; The earth is rowelled deep with spurs of flame, And on your helmet stones and ashes shower.
From Rhymes of a Red Cross Man by Service, Robert W. (Robert 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
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
For, what great, black horse is this which, despite Carnaby's flailing whip and cruel, rowelling spur, is slowly, surely creeping up with the laboring gray?
From The Amateur Gentleman by Farnol, Jeffery
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
One such rowelling had just been taking place when, on the Sunday morning following the Easter holidays, Dolph Dennison dropped in to see Reed Opdyke.
From The Brentons by Dexter, Wilson C.
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.
