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
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
The reason of this charge being called the spur fire is, because the sparks it yields have a great resemblance to the rowel of a spur, from whence it takes its name.
From Endless Amusement A Collection of Nearly 400 Entertaining Experiments by Unknown
If the rowel is moderately sharp only, no cruelty can arise, less I maintain than in the use of a whip.
From Ladies on Horseback Learning, Park-Riding, and Hunting, with Hints upon Costume, and Numerous Anecdotes by Lambert, Nannie
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
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
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.
Usually these legs were clothed in tight-fitting overalls, and his small feet incased in boots of high-grade leather wonderfully roweled.
From Bred of the Desert A Horse and a Romance by Horton, Marcus
Lefty grinned in the moonlight, roweled his horse lightly and drifted.
From Kid Wolf of Texas by Powers, Paul S. (Paul Sylvester)
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
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
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
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
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)
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
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
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
Saint Peter's had never doubted the force or the efficiency of its doctrines; but it was at least a generation since it had been so rowelled with their points.
From The Brentons by Dexter, Wilson C.
"Where are you coming with that cayuse?" demanded young McCrae, and suddenly raked a rowelled heel behind the animal's shoulder.
From Desert Conquest or, Precious Waters by Rowe, Clarence H. (Clarence Herbert)
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
Slingsby is plying his whip, Carnaby is rowelling savagely, yet, neck and neck, the sorrel and the gray race for the jump, with Barnabas and the Marquis behind.
From The Amateur Gentleman by Farnol, Jeffery
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
The rowelling bistoury, employed for the horses, answers better than the saw; but even it occasions so much pain as to cause serious annoyance and obstruction.
From The Dog by Dinks
It was really quite extraordinary how much was accomplished under the nagging spur of weather conditions and the cruel rowelling of Thorpe.
From The Blazed Trail by White, Stewart Edward
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.
