wheel
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: enpr: wēl
ipa: /wiːl/
note: without the wine–whine merger
ipa: /ʍiːl/
ipa: /wil/
note: without the wine–whine merger
ipa: /ʍil/
homophone: wheal
homophone: weal
homophone: weel (wine–whine merger)
homophone: we'll (one pronunciation along with the wine–whine merger)
rhymes: -iːl
Forms: form: wheels
form: wheeling
form: wheeled
form: wheeled
Etymology: From Middle English whel, from Old English hwēol, from Proto-West Germanic *hwehwl, from Proto-Germanic *hwehwlą, *hweulō, from Proto-Indo-European *kʷekʷlóm, *kʷékʷlos, *kʷékʷléh₂, reduplication of *kʷel- (“to turn”) and a suffix (literally "(the thing that) turns and turns"). See also West Frisian tsjil, Dutch wiel, Danish hjul; also Tocharian B kokale (“cart, wagon”), Ancient Greek κύκλος (kúklos, “cycle, wheel”), Avestan 𐬗𐬀𐬑𐬭𐬀 (caxra), Sanskrit चक्र (cakrá); and Latin colō (“to till, cultivate”), Tocharian A and Tocharian B käl- (“to bear; bring”), Ancient Greek πέλω (pélō, “to come into existence, become”), Old Church Slavonic коло (kolo, “wheel”), Albanian sjell (“to bring, carry, turn around”), Avestan 𐬗𐬀𐬭𐬀𐬌𐬙𐬌 (caraⁱti, “it circulates”), Sanskrit चरति (cárati, “it moves, wanders”). Doublet of chakra, chakram, charkha, chukker, cycle, cyclus, and kike.
Senses: examples: text: Wheel that trolley over here, would you?
text: Why should we confine a body of men to making laws, when so many of them might be more usefully employed in wheeling barrows?
ref: 1841, “Parliamentary Masons.—Parliamentary Pictures”, in Punch, volume I, page 162:
text: He […] cleared the table; piled everything on the dumb-waiter; gave us our wine-glasses; and, of his own accord, wheeled the dumb-waiter into the pantry.
ref: 1849 May – 1850 November, Charles Dickens, chapter 28, in The Personal History of David Copperfield, London: Bradbury & Evans, […], published 1850, →OCLC:
text: But two cheerful women servants appeared from what was presumably the kitchen direction, wheeling a curious wicker erection, which his small guide informed him was called Aunt Clatter—manifestly deservedly—and which bore on its shelves the substance of the meal.
ref: 1916, H. G. Wells, Mr. Britling Sees It Through, Book I, Chapter 1, § 9:
glosses: To roll along on wheels.
examples: text: She wheeled the dung in the wheelbarrow
Along a stretch of road;
But she always ran away and left
Her not-nice load,
ref: 1916, Robert Frost, “A Girl’s Garden”, in Mountain Interval, New York: Henry Holt & Co, page 61:
text: Bob was wheeling the baby up and down, Mabel watching him, hawk-eyed, as though she suspected him of harboring intentions of tipping the cab over.
ref: 1924, Bess Streeter Aldrich, chapter 3, in Mother Mason:
text: We open in a grimy, fluorescent-lit military base somewhere in rural England, where the girl from the poster, Melanie (Sennia Nanua), is the star student in a class full of children who are wheeled into school—or at least, the nondescript concrete room that serves as a school—with their arms, legs, and foreheads bound to their wheelchairs by leather straps.
ref: 2017 February 23, Katie Rife, “The Girl With All The Gifts tries to put a fresh spin on overripe zombie clichés”, in The Onion AV Club:
glosses: To transport something or someone using any wheeled mechanism, such as a wheelchair.
glosses: To ride a bicycle or tricycle.
examples: text: Your daughter, if you have not given her leave,
I say again, hath made a gross revolt;
Tying her duty, beauty, wit and fortunes
In an extravagant and wheeling stranger
Of here and every where.
ref: c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Othello, the Moore of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i]:
text: The dog screamed, and, wheeling in terror, galloped headlong in a new direction.
ref: 1898, Stephen Crane, The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky:
text: The gulls in the river were flying in long, lazy curves, dipping down to the water, skimming it an instant, and then wheeling up again with easy, slanting wings.
ref: 1912, James Stephens, chapter 8, in The Charwoman’s Daughter:
text: But before he could move a step a taxi-cab turned into the Adelphi from the Strand, and wheeling in front of their faces, stopped at Calladine's door.
ref: 1917, A. E. W. Mason, chapter 3, in The Affair at the Semiramis Hotel:
text: Enver, Jemal and Feisal watched the troops wheeling and turning in the dusty plain outside the city gate, rushing up and down in mimic camel-battle, or spurring their horses in the javelin game after immemorial Arab fashion.
ref: 1922, T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Introduction, Chapter 5:
glosses: To change direction quickly, turn, pivot, whirl, wheel around.
examples: text: […] he did as Menelaus had said, and set off running as soon as he had given his armour to a comrade, Laodocus, who was wheeling his horses round, close beside him.
ref: 1898, Samuel Butler, The Iliad of Homer, Rendered into English Prose, Book 17:
text: Then wheeling his black steed suddenly, he raced away before the dazed soldiers could get their wits together to send a shower of arrows after him.
ref: 1931, Robert E. Howard, chapter 2, in Hawks of Outremer:
glosses: To cause to change direction quickly, turn.
examples: text: The vulture wheeled above us.
text: […] Each aloft
Upon his narrowed eminence bore globes
Of wheeling suns, or stars, or semblances
Of either, showering circular abyss
Of radiance.
ref: 1829, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Timbuctoo, lines 63–67:
text: The nineteenth Autumn has come upon me / Since I first made my count. / I saw, before I had well finished, / All suddenly mount / And scatter wheeling in great broken rings / Upon their clamorous wings.
ref: 1917 November, W[illiam] B[utler] Yeats, “The Wild Swans at Coole”, in The Wild Swans at Coole, Other Verses and a Play in Verse, Churchtown, Dundrum [Dublin]: The Cuala Press, →OCLC, page 1:
text: We could see the poor brute in the bottom, as the vultures came wheeling down like baroque aeroplanes; its ribs were already bare.
ref: 1933, Robert Byron, First Russia, Then Tibet, Part II, Chapter 8:
text: As the moon wheels around Earth every 28 days and shows us a progressively greater and then stingier slice of its sun-lightened face, the distance between the moon and Earth changes, too. At the nearest point along its egg-shaped orbit, its perigee, the moon may be 26,000 miles closer to us than it is at its far point.
ref: 2014 September 7, Natalie Angier, “The Moon comes around again [print version: Revisiting a moon that still has secrets to reveal: Supermoon revives interest in its violent origins and hidden face, International New York Times, 10 September 2014, p. 8]”, in The New York Times:
glosses: To travel around in large circles, particularly in the air.
examples: text: Now Heav’n in all her Glorie shon, and rowld
Her motions, as the great first-Movers hand
First wheeld thir course;
ref: 1667, John Milton, “Book VII”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC, lines 499-501:
text: Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds:
ref: 1751, Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, lines 5–8:
text: […] upward, in the mellow blush of day,
The noisy bittern wheeled his spiral way.
ref: 1839, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Sunrise on the Hills:
glosses: To put into a rotatory motion; to cause to turn or revolve; to make or perform in a circle.
examples: text: The crowd wanted to track to be played again, so they shouted out "Wheel it".
qualifier: grime music
glosses: To reload a track; to play a wheel-up.
Derived terms: wheel around
wheel away
wheel-up
word-wheeling