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
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?
She rode à la cavalière, in a Mexican saddle, and wearing big rowel Mexican spurs, and appears from her account to have preferred this style of riding to the modern style and side-saddle.
From Ladies on Horseback Learning, Park-Riding, and Hunting, with Hints upon Costume, and Numerous Anecdotes by Lambert, Nannie
His booted foot moved, but now rowel points flashed in the sun.
From Rebel Spurs by Norton, Andre
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
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
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
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)
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
It was still another spur roweling me back to the ring of combat.
From The Prairie Mother by Becher, Arthur E.
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
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.
His anger rowelled him on, and when he reached the opposite shore of the lake he was obliged to wait for the younger man to come floundering and panting up to him.
From King Spruce, A Novel by Day, Holman
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
Now every bridle is grasped, every sword hilt in grip, and the rowelled heels are ready to dash into the horses' flanks at the first note of the trumpet blast.
From The Young Priest's Keepsake by Phelan, Michael
On our left was an impassable hedge of small trees, crowning a heavy drop into the field outside the wood; our faces were rowelled by the branches of young spruce firs.
From Further Experiences of an Irish R.M. by Ross, Martin
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
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
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)
"I've thought about it—a good deal—too," was her simple response, and Boone forced himself on, rowelling his lagging speech with a determined will power.
From The Tempering by Buck, Charles Neville
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.
A rowelling pressure of haste drove him, while snares of trailing creepers, pitfalls blotted into darkness and the thickness of jungle-like undergrowth handicapped him with many stubborn difficulties.
From The Tempering by Buck, Charles Neville
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.
