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?
It was generally borne pierced with a round hole, and then represents, as its name implies, the rowel of a spur.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 13, Slice 3 "Helmont, Jean" to "Hernosand" by Various
He had found that men might growl at being treated "like dogs" but to rowel the human soul it was far better to act as though they did not exist at all.
From Command by McFee, William
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
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
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.
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
Of course, Tom was a prisoner, and there was not a chance of his getting away; still, he could feel delight because of this possibility that roweled his mind.
From Ruth Fielding Homeward Bound A Red Cross Worker's Ocean Perils by Emerson, Alice B.
It was still another spur roweling me back to the ring of combat.
From The Prairie Mother by Becher, Arthur E.
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)
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.
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
Pard was grunting now, but Douglas rowelled him and pushed on until he saw the antelope kneeling in the lee of an outcropping of rock.
From Judith of the Godless Valley by Morrow, Honoré
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
The musical ring of his rowelled spurs ceased as he grasped her hands.
From A Tar-Heel Baron by Holloway, Edward Stratton
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)
For, as wakening drums, Your voice shall set his blood stirring; His heart shall grow strong like the main When the rowelled winds are spurring, And the broad tides landward strain.
From Dreams and Days: Poems by Lathrop, George Parsons
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
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.
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
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
"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
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.
