Roweling

Part of speech: noun, verb

Definitions

1. Pricking a horse's flanks with the small spiked wheel of a spur to urge it forward
2. Urging a horse onward by jabbing it with the toothed revolving disc fitted to a rider's spur
3. Goading an animal into motion by pressing a spiked spur wheel into its side

Etymology: The spur's little wheel has a name that is older than the spur's modern shape would suggest, and it began as nothing more than a small wheel. The noun "rowel" comes from Middle English "rowel" or "rowell," borrowed from Old French "roel" or "roiele," which is related to modern French "rouelle," meaning a small wheel or slice. Those French forms trace back to Late Latin "rotella," a diminutive of Latin "rota," meaning "wheel." Put simply, a rowel is a little wheel, and that is exactly what the spur's jabbing disc is. The verb grew from the noun, so the sense of prodding a horse with that spiked wheel follows naturally from the object itself. English also kept "rotella" as a doublet, a separate English word from the same Latin source, which reached the language by a different route.

Synonyms: spurring, goading