wheel

noun

1. A circular device capable of rotating on its axis, facilitating movement or transportation or performing labour in machines.

   “The departure was not unduly prolonged.[…]Within the door Mrs. Spoker hastily imparted to Mrs. Love a few final sentiments on the subject of Divine Intention in the disposition of buckets; farewells and last commiserations; a deep, guttural instigation to the horse; and the wheels of the waggonette crunched heavily away into obscurity.”

2. (informal, with-definite-article)A circular device capable of rotating on its axis, facilitating movement or transportation or performing labour in machines.

   “He fell asleep at the wheel.”

3. A circular device capable of rotating on its axis, facilitating movement or transportation or performing labour in machines.

   “I hear the noise about thy keel; ⁠I hear the bell struck in the night: ⁠I see the cabin-window bright; I see the sailor at the wheel.”

4. A circular device capable of rotating on its axis, facilitating movement or transportation or performing labour in machines.
5. A circular device capable of rotating on its axis, facilitating movement or transportation or performing labour in machines.

   “Then I went down to the potter's house, and, behold, he wrought a work on the wheels.”

   “Turn, turn, my wheel! This earthen jar / A touch can make, a touch can mar.”

6. The breaking wheel, an old instrument of torture.
7. (slang)A person with a great deal of power or influence; a big wheel.
8. (dated, slang)A person with a great deal of power or influence; a big wheel.
9. (slang)The lowest straight in poker: ace-2-3-4-5.
10. (slang)The best low hand in Lowball or High-low split poker: either ace-2-3-4-5 or 2-3-4-5-7, depending on the variant.
11. A wheelrim.
12. A round portion of cheese.
13. A Catherine wheel firework.
14. (obsolete)A rolling or revolving body; anything of a circular form; a disk; an orb.

    “Flashing thick flames , wheel within wheel undrawn”

15. A turn or revolution; rotation; compass.

    “[He] throws his steep flight in many an aery wheel.”

16. (figuratively)A recurring or cyclical course of events.

    “the wheel of life”

    “According to the common vicissitude and wheel of things, the proud and the insolent, after long trampling upon others, come at length to be trampled upon themselves.”

17. (figuratively)The control of, or ability to steer, the course of events.

    “This is the story of how AI changed our world in 2025, in new and exciting and sometimes frightening ways. It is the story of how Huang and other tech titans grabbed the wheel of history, developing technology and making decisions that are reshaping the information landscape, the climate, and our livelihoods.”

18. (archaic, slang)A dollar.
19. (UK, archaic, slang)A crown coin.
20. (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.”

21. A maneuver in marching in which the marchers turn in a curving fashion to right or left so that the order of marchers does not change.
22. A type of algebra where division is always defined, and in particular division by zero is meaningful.

    “The real numbers can be extended to a wheel, as can any commutative ring.”

23. The return to a peculiar rhythm at the end of each stanza.

verb

1. (transitive)To roll along on wheels.

   “Wheel that trolley over here, would you?”

   “I had to wheel my bicycle up a steep hill.”

   “Why should we confine a body of men to making laws, when so many of them might be more usefully employed in wheeling barrows?”

   “He […] cleared the table; piled everything on the dumb-waiter; gave us our wine-glasses; and, of his own accord, wheeled the dumb-waiter into the pantry.”

   “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.”

2. (transitive)To transport something or someone using any wheeled mechanism, such as a wheelchair.

   “The patient was wheeled out of the ER.”

   “She wheeled the dung in the wheelbarrow Along a stretch of road; But she always ran away and left Her not-nice load,”

   “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.”

   “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.”

3. (dated, intransitive)To ride a bicycle or tricycle.
4. (intransitive)To make a circular movement.

   “My arms wheeled frantically in the air as I tried to signal for help.”

5. (intransitive)To move smoothly and easily, as if on wheels.

   “I wheeled through the gathering, making all my appointed stops.”

6. (intransitive)To change direction quickly, turn, pivot, whirl, wheel around.

   “Your daughter, if you have not given her leave, I say again, hath made a gross revolt; Tying her duty, beauty, wit and fortunes In an extravagant and wheeling stranger Of here and every where.”

   “The dog screamed, and, wheeling in terror, galloped headlong in a new direction.”

   “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.”

   “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.”

   “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.”

7. (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.”

   “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.”

8. (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.”

   “The nineteenth Autumn has come upon me / Since I first made my count. / I saw, before I had well finished, / All suddenly mount / And scatter wheeling in great broken rings / Upon their clamorous wings.”

   “We could see the poor brute in the bottom, as the vultures came wheeling down like baroque aeroplanes; its ribs were already bare.”

   “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.”

9. (transitive)To put into a rotatory motion; to cause to turn or revolve; to make or perform in a circle.

   “Now Heav’n in all her Glorie shon, and rowld Her motions, as the great first-Movers hand First wheeld thir course;”

   “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:”

   “[…] upward, in the mellow blush of day, The noisy bittern wheeled his spiral way.”

10. (intransitive)To reload a track; to play a wheel-up.

    “The crowd wanted to track to be played again, so they shouted out "Wheel it".”