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
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 George Henry Borrow
And the young man sprang on the bed, and thrust the rowel of a spur through the laths.
From Historical Romances: Under the Red Robe, Count Hannibal, A Gentleman of France by Stanley J. Weyman
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 rowel was struck deep and the consequences were not considered.
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 L. E. (Lucius Eugene) Chittenden
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
As they left the bank a cowboy rode up on a flea-bitten roan that was lathered with sweat, sadly roweled and leg-weary.
From Rimrock Trail by Joseph Allan Dunn
"You're right!" groaned Nelson, who felt himself roweled by circumstances.
From The Mission of Janice Day by Corinne Turner
He roweled Pronto and, with Sam even in the jump, they galloped through the half-ring without opposition.
From Rimrock Trail by Joseph Allan Dunn
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 William MacLeod Raine
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 Harold Titus
It was still another spur roweling me back to the ring of combat.
From The Prairie Mother by Arthur E. Becher
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 Holman Day
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 Clarence E. Mulford
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 Michael Phelan
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 Wilson C. Dexter
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 Frank Norris
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 Robert W. (Robert William) Service
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 Honoré Morrow
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
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 Margaret Burnham
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 Charles Neville Buck
Only the most merciless of rowelling could goad the jaded beast out of a jog except for short spurts.
From Bloom of Cactus by Ralph P. (Ralph Pallen) Coleman
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 Honoré Morrow
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