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”). Doublet of rotella.
1
A small spiked wheel on the end of a spur of certain types.
I / Perceive 'tis an advantage for a man to vvear ſpurres, / The rovvell of Knight-hood does gingle in the eare of their / Vnderſtanding.1632, Iames Shirley [i.e., James Shirley], Changes: Or, Love in a Maze. A Comedie, […], London: […] G. P. for William Cooke, […], →OCLC, Act I, page 3:
The deep and sharp rowels with which Ivanhoe’s heels were now armed, began to make the worthy Prior repent of his courtesy,[…].1819 December 20 (indicated as 1820), Walter Scott, Ivanhoe; a Romance. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […], →OCLC:
3 more examples
The dry desert of my native land, her men grey and gaunt, their spines twisted, their feet shod with rowel and spur.1939, Henry Miller, The Cosmological Eye, page 246:
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.1973, Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, 1st US edition, New York: Viking Press, →ISBN:
He nodded at the Americans. Buena suerte, he said. He put the long rowels of his spurs to the horse and they moved on.1992, Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses (The Border Trilogy; 1), New York, N.Y.: Alfred A[braham] Knopf, →ISBN, page 62:
2
A little flat ring or wheel on a horse's bit.
The iron rowels into frothy foam he bit.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
3
A roll of hair, silk, etc., passed through the flesh of a horse in the manner of a seton in human surgery.
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”). Doublet of rotella.
1
To use a rowel on (something), especially to drain fluid.
2
To fit with spurs.
3
To apply the spur to.
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 […].1985, Cormac McCarthy, chapter XIII, in Blood Meridian […] , →OCLC:
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.1941, Thomas Bell, Out of This Furnace, page 240: