rowel
Pronunciation
  • IPA: /ˈɹoʊəl/
Noun

rowel (plural rowels)

  1. The small spiked wheel on the end of a spur.
    • 1819, Walter Scott, Ivanhoe, 1833, The Complete Works of Sir Walter Scott, Volume 3, page 121 ↗,
      The deep and sharp rowels with which Ivanhoe’s heels were now armed, began to make the worthy Prior repent of his courtesy, […] .
    • 1939, Henry Miller, The Cosmological Eye, page 246 ↗,
      The dry desert of my native land, her men grey and gaunt, their spines twisted, their feet shod with rowel and spur.
    • 1973, Thomas Pynchon, 2013, Gravity's Rainbow, page 892 ↗,
      The Lone Ranger will storm in at the head of a posse, rowels tearing blood from the stallion’s white hide, to find his young friend, innocent Dan, swinging from a tree limb by a broken neck.
    • 1992, Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses, [http://books.google.com.au/books?id=DrOwAAAAIAAJ&q=%22He+nodded+at+the+Americans.++Buena+suerte,+he+said%22&dq=%22He+nodded+at+the+Americans.++Buena+suerte,+he+said%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=JsxUU5DmNsa5lQX5tIGgCw&ved=0CDsQ6AEwAg page 62],
      He nodded at the Americans. Buena suerte, he said. He put the long rowels of his spurs to the horse and they moved on.
  2. A little flat ring or wheel on a horse's bit.
    • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book 1: Knight of the Red Cross, 1850, Edmund Spenser's Knight of the Red Cross; or Holiness, page 74 ↗,
      The iron rowels into frothy foam he bit.
  3. A roll of hair, silk, etc., passed through the flesh of a horse in the manner of a seton in human surgery.
Translations Verb

rowel (rowels, present participle roweling; past and past participle roweled)

  1. (transitive) To use a rowel on (something), especially to drain fluid.
  2. (transitive) To fit with spurs.
  3. (transitive) To apply the spur to.
    to spur a horse
  4. (transitive, figurative) To incite; to goad.
    • 1941, Thomas Bell, Out of This Furnace, [http://books.google.com.au/books?id=TWLtI_V5YB4C&pg=PA240&dq=%22He+would+have+been+completely+ignorant+of+what+was+going+on+if+Frank,+periodically+roweled%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=UdBUU4KFEIzKlAWL0oDAAg&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22He%20would%20have%20been%20completely%20ignorant%20of%20what%20was%20going%20on%20if%20Frank%2C%20periodically%20roweled%22&f=false page 240],
      He would have been completely ignorant of what was going on if Frank, periodically roweled by the viciously anti-labor stand of the Pittsburgh newspapers, hadn't felt the need of an audience.



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