different between rowel vs rower

English

Etymology

From Middle English rowel, rowell, rowelle, from Old French roel, roiele (compare modern French rouelle), from Late Latin rotella, diminutive of Latin rota (“wheel”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /??o??l/
• Rhymes: -???l

Noun

rowel (plural rowels)

1. The small spiked wheel on the end of a spur.
   • 1819, Walter Scott, Ivanhoe, 1833, The Complete Works of Sir Walter Scott, Volume 3, page 121,

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

   • 1939, Henry Miller, The Cosmological Eye, page 246,

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

   • 1973, Thomas Pynchon, 2013, Gravity's Rainbow, page 892,

     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.

   • 1992, Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses, page 62,

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

2. A little flat ring or wheel on a horse's bit.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book 1: Knight of the Red Cross, 1850, Edmund Spenser's Knight of the Red Cross; or Holiness, page 74,

     The iron rowels into frothy foam he bit.

3. A roll of hair, silk, etc., passed through the flesh of a horse in the manner of a seton in human surgery.

Translations

Verb

rowel (third-person singular simple present rowels, present participle roweling or rowelling, simple past and past participle roweled or rowelled)

1. (transitive) To use a rowel on (something), especially to drain fluid.
2. (transitive) To fit with spurs.
3. (transitive) To apply the spur to.

   to rowel a horse

4. (transitive, figuratively) To incite; to goad.
   • 1941, Thomas Bell, Out of This Furnace, page 240,

     He would have been completely ignorant of what was going on if Frank, periodically roweled by the viciously anti-labor stand of the Pittsburgh newspapers, hadn't felt the need of an audience.

Translations

Anagrams

• Lower, lower, owler

English

Etymology

From Middle English rower, rowere, roware, equivalent to row +? -er. Cognate with Dutch roeier (“rower”), Danish roer (“rower”), Norwegian roer (“rower”). Compare also Old English r?wend (“rower”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /????.?(?)/

Noun

rower (plural rowers)

1. One who rows.
   • 1874, Marcus Clarke, For the Term of His Natural Life, Chapter VI

     It had been a sort of race hitherto, and the rowers, with set teeth and compressed lips, had pulled stroke for stroke.

2. A rowing machine.
   • 1988, Richard Allen Winett, Ageless athletes (page 65)

     Aerobic and weight training sessions should also complement each other. For example, on a day you work your upper body with weights, you can use a rower for aerobics.

Translations

Afrikaans

Etymology

From Dutch rover, from Middle Dutch rôvere. Equivalent to roof +? -er.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?r???.v?r/

Noun

rower (plural rowers, diminutive rowertjie)

1. robber, bandit

Polish

Etymology

From the name of the British company English Rover.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?r?.v?r/

Noun

rower m inan

1. bicycle, bike

Declension

Descendants

• ? Belarusian: ?????? (róvar)
• ? Ukrainian: ?????? (róver)
• ? Yiddish: ???????? (rover)

Further reading

• rower in Polish dictionaries at PWN