sprocket
Americannoun
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sprockets
plural
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Machinery.
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Also called chainwheel. Also called sprocket wheel. a toothed wheel engaging with a conveyor or power chain.
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one tooth of such a wheel.
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Carpentry. a wedge-shaped piece of wood extending a sloping roof over the eaves with a flatter pitch.
noun
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Also called: sprocket wheel. a relatively thin wheel having teeth projecting radially from the rim, esp one that drives or is driven by a chain
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an individual tooth on such a wheel
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a cylindrical wheel with teeth on one or both rims for pulling film through a camera or projector
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a small wedge-shaped piece of wood used to extend a roof over the eaves
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of sprocket
First recorded in 1530–40; origin uncertain
Vocabulary lists containing sprocket
Mechanical Engineering
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Engineering - Middle School
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Engineering - High School
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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:
What came first, the sprocket or the oil?
From Salon ● Jun. 6, 2026
Over in a dilapidated shack on the opposite side of the highway, 24-year-old Nasratullah Raihan said much the same as he watched a repairman fiddle with the rear sprocket of his bicycle.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 17, 2021
He’s always been a gearhead, devoted to celluloid and sprocket holes, but his best movies are also sentimental as hell—big, sloppy tearjerkers wrapped inside clockwork thrillers.
From Slate ● Aug. 27, 2020
At the Central Wood Car Wash in Largo, Md., owner Paul Earp turned on the big conveyor belt only to discover a cold-fractured sprocket.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 28, 2017
“Sonny built a rocket? He doesn’t even know how to put the sprocket chain back on his bike when it slips off.”
From "October Sky" by Homer Hickam
“There’s still loops and sprockets but it is different.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 20, 2026
May 2: Tesla stockholders are dismayed when CEO Elon Musk announces he is changing his name to Spacely and that his company will stop manufacturing electric cars in favor of sprockets.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 2, 2021
The former stained-glass factory in Haarlem’s old town, lovingly repurposed into an art studio by Collado’s father-in-law, houses an unconventional mélange of sprockets and easels, grinders and paint brushes.
From The Verge ● Sep. 23, 2020
Her eyelashes are bicycle sprockets, and her body is an old barrel.
From Washington Times ● Jun. 26, 2014
Next workers attached the ten-ton chain to the sprockets and to a receiving sprocket at the wheel.
From "The Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson
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.
