wheel

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 charkha, cycle, and chakra.

noun

1. A circular device capable of rotating on its axis, facilitating movement or transportation or performing labour in machines.
   1. (informal, with "the") A steering wheel and its implied control of a vehicle.
   2. (nautical) The instrument attached to the rudder by which a vessel is steered.
   3. A spinning wheel.
   4. A potter's wheel.
      Turn, turn, my wheel! This earthen jar / A touch can make, a touch can mar. 1878, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Kéramos
2. The breaking wheel, an old instrument of torture.
3. (slang) A person with a great deal of power or influence; a big wheel.
   1. (computing, dated) A superuser on certain systems.
4. (poker slang) The lowest straight in poker: ace, 2, 3, 4, 5.
5. (automotive) A wheelrim.
6. A round portion of cheese.
7. A Catherine wheel firework.
8. (obsolete) A rolling or revolving body; anything of a circular form; a disk; an orb.
9. A turn or revolution; rotation; compass.
10. (figurative) A recurring or cyclical course of events.
    the wheel of life
11. (slang, archaic) A dollar.
12. (UK, slang, archaic) A crown coin; a "cartwheel".
13. (archaic, informal) A bicycle or tricycle.
    There was no vehicle of any sort, on land or water, in those days, that could go as fast as a bicycle, except a railroad train. […] Hammondsport and Glenn Curtiss had never even heard of the not yet quite born automobile. But Glenn Curtiss could push his "wheel," with those long legs of his, uphill, downhill or on the level, faster than any other boy in Hammondsport. 1927 March, Popular Science, page 22
14. A manoeuvre in marching in which the marchers turn in a curving fashion to right or left so that the order of marchers does not change.

verb

1. (transitive) To roll along on wheels.
   Wheel that trolley over here, would you?
   Why should we confine a body of men to making laws, when so many of them might be more usefully employed in wheeling barrows? 1841, “Parliamentary Masons.—Parliamentary Pictures”, in Punch, volume I, page 162
   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. 1916, H. G. Wells, Mr. Britling Sees It Through, Book I, Chapter 1, § 9
2. (transitive) To transport something or someone using any wheeled mechanism, such as a wheelchair.
   She wheeled the dung in the wheelbarrow Along a stretch of road; But she always ran away and left Her not-nice load, 1916, Robert Frost, “A Girl’s Garden”, in Mountain Interval, New York: Henry Holt & Co, page 61
   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. 1924, Bess Streeter Aldrich, chapter 3, in Mother Mason
   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. February 23, 2017, Katie Rife, “The Girl With All The Gifts tries to put a fresh spin on overripe zombie clichés”, in The Onion AV Club
3. (intransitive, dated) To ride a bicycle or tricycle.
4. (intransitive) To change direction quickly, turn, pivot, whirl, wheel around.
   The dog screamed, and, wheeling in terror, galloped headlong in a new direction. 1898, Stephen Crane, The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky
   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. 1912, James Stephens, chapter 8, in The Charwoman’s Daughter
   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. 1917, A. E. W. Mason, chapter 3, in The Affair at the Semiramis Hotel
   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. 1922, T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Introduction, Chapter 5
5. (transitive) To cause to change direction quickly, turn.
   […] 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. 1898, Samuel Butler, The Iliad of Homer, Rendered into English Prose, Book 17
   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. 1931, Robert E. Howard, chapter 2, in Hawks of Outremer
6. (intransitive) To travel around in large circles, particularly in the air.
   The vulture wheeled above us.
   […] Each aloft Upon his narrowed eminence bore globes Of wheeling suns, or stars, or semblances Of either, showering circular abyss Of radiance. 1829, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Timbuctoo, lines 63–67
   We could see the poor brute in the bottom, as the vultures came wheeling down like baroque aeroplanes; its ribs were already bare. 1933, Robert Byron, First Russia, Then Tibet, Part II, Chapter 8
   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. 7 September 2014, 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
7. (transitive) To put into a rotatory motion; to cause to turn or revolve; to make or perform in a circle.
   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: 1751, Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, lines 5–8
   […] upward, in the mellow blush of day, The noisy bittern wheeled his spiral way. 1839, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Sunrise on the Hills
8. (intransitive, grime music) To reload a track; to play a wheel-up.
   The crowd wanted to track to be played again, so they shouted out "Wheel it".