Meaning

A small spiked wheel on the end of a spur of certain types..

Definitions by Sense

1. A small spiked wheel on the end of a spur of certain types.
2. A little flat ring or wheel on a horse's bit.
3. A roll of hair, silk, etc., passed through the flesh of a horse in the manner of a seton in human surgery.
4. (transitive) To use a rowel on (something), especially to drain fluid.
5. (transitive) To fit with spurs.
6. (transitive) To apply the spur to.
7. (transitive, figurative) To incite; to goad.

Example Sentences

I / Perceive 'tis an advantage for a man to vvear ſpurres, / The rovvell of Knight-hood does gingle in the eare of their / Vnderſtanding.

The deep and sharp rowels with which Ivanhoe’s heels were now armed, began to make the worthy Prior repent of his courtesy,[…].

The dry desert of my native land, her men grey and gaunt, their spines twisted, their feet shod with rowel and spur.

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.

He nodded at the Americans. Buena suerte, he said. He put the long rowels of his spurs to the horse and they moved on.

The iron rowels into frothy foam he bit.

to rowel a horse

When the first dogs barked Glanton roweled his horse forward and they came out of the trees and across the dry scrub with the long necks of the horses leaning out of the dust avid as hounds […].

Word Forms

• rowels
• rowell
• roweling
• rowelling
• roweled
• rowelled

Related Words

When Should You Use Rowel?

Use rowel when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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