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.
South.
[He] throws his steep flight in many an aëry wheel.
Milton.
A wheel within a wheel, or Wheels within wheels, a complication of
circumstances, motives, etc. - - Balance wheel. See in the Vocab. —
Bevel wheel, Brake wheel, Cam wheel, Fifth wheel, Overshot wheel,
Spinning wheel, etc. See under Bevel, Brake, etc. — Core wheel. (Mach.)
(a) A mortise gear. (b) A wheel having a rim perforated to receive
wooden cogs; the skeleton of a mortise gear. — Measuring wheel, an
odometer, or perambulator. — Wheel and axle (Mech.), one of the
elementary machines or mechanical powers, consisting of a wheel fixed
to an axle, and used for raising great weights, by applying the power
to the circumference of the wheel, and attaching the weight, by a rope
or chain, to that of the axle. Called also axis in peritrochio, and
perpetual lever, — the principle of equilibrium involved being the same
as in the lever, while its action is continuous. See Mechanical powers,
under Mechanical. — Wheel animal, or Wheel animalcule (Zoöl.), any one
of numerous species of rotifers having a ciliated disk at the anterior
end. — Wheel barometer. (Physics) See under Barometer. — Wheel boat, a
boat with wheels, to be used either on water or upon inclined planes or
railways. — Wheel bug (Zoöl.), a large North American hemipterous
insect (Prionidus cristatus) which sucks the blood of other insects. So
named from the curious shape of the prothorax. — Wheel carriage, a
carriage moving on wheels. — Wheel chains, or Wheel ropes (Naut.), the
chains or ropes connecting the wheel and rudder. — Wheel cutter, a
machine for shaping the cogs of gear wheels; a gear cutter. — Wheel
horse, one of the horses nearest to the wheels, as opposed to a leader,
or forward horse; — called also wheeler. — Wheel lathe, a lathe for
turning railway-car wheels. — Wheel lock. (a) A letter lock. See under
Letter. (b) A kind of gunlock in which sparks were struck from a flint,
or piece of iron pyrites, by a revolving wheel. (c) A kind of brake a
carriage. — Wheel ore (Min.), a variety of bournonite so named from the
shape of its twin crystals. See Bournonite. — Wheel pit (Steam Engine),
a pit in the ground, in which the lower part of the fly wheel runs. —
Wheel plow, or Wheel plough, a plow having one or two wheels attached,
to render it more steady, and to regulate the depth of the furrow. —
Wheel press, a press by which railway-car wheels are forced on, or off,
their axles. — Wheel race, the place in which a water wheel is set. —
Wheel rope (Naut.), a tiller rope. See under Tiller. — Wheel stitch
(Needlework), a stitch resembling a spider's web, worked into the
material, and not over an open space. Caulfeild & S. (Dict. of
Needlework). — Wheel tree (Bot.), a tree (Aspidosperma excelsum) of
Guiana, which has a trunk so curiously fluted that a transverse section
resembles the hub and spokes of a coarsely made wheel. See Paddlewood.
— Wheel urchin (Zoöl.), any sea urchin of the genus Rotula having a
round, flat shell. — Wheel window (Arch.), a circular window having
radiating mullions arranged like the spokes of a wheel. Cf. Rose
window, under Rose.