Roweled

Part of speech: verb, adjective

Definitions

1. Pricked or jabbed with a spiked wheel, especially on a horse's flank to urge it forward
2. Struck or wounded with a rowel, the spiked revolving wheel on a spur
3. Goaded or pierced using a small toothed wheel attached to a spur

Etymology: "Roweled" is the past tense and past participle of "rowel," a verb meaning to prick a horse with the small spiked wheel of a spur. The noun it comes from entered Middle English as "rowel," "rowell," or "rowelle," borrowed from Old French "roel" or "roiele," which is related to modern French "rouelle." Those French forms trace back to Late Latin "rotella," a diminutive of Latin "rota," meaning "wheel." The story is in that shape. A rowel is a tiny wheel, a little circle of metal with points around its rim, set on a spur so that a rider's heel movement drives the points into a horse's flank. The word's whole history is the history of a wheel shrunk down to fit a boot heel. "Rotella" is a doublet of the same Latin root, so the English term and the French term are cousins that came into the language by separate routes.