Definition of "wheel"

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.

1922, Ben Travers, chapter 5, in A Cuckoo in the Nest

Flashing thick flames , wheel within wheel undrawn

1667, John Milton, “(please specify the book number)”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], […]; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873,

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

1667, John Milton, “Book III”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], […]; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873,

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.

1692–1717, Robert South, Twelve Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions, 6th edition, volumes (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: […] J[ames] Bettenham, for Jonah Bowyer, […], published 1727

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.

1927 March, Popular Science, page 22

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

1841, “Parliamentary Masons.—Parliamentary Pictures”, in Punch‎, volume I, page 162

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.

1849 May – 1850 November, Charles Dickens, chapter 28, in The Personal History of David Copperfield, London: Bradbury & Evans, […], published 1850

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.

1916, H. G. Wells, Mr. Britling Sees It Through‎, Book I, Chapter 1, § 9

She wheeled the dung in the wheelbarrowAlong a stretch of road;But she always ran away and leftHer not-nice load,

1916, Robert Frost, “A Girl’s Garden”, in Mountain Interval‎, New York: Henry Holt & Co, page 61

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.

1924, Bess Streeter Aldrich, chapter 3, in Mother Mason‎

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.

2017 February 23, Katie Rife, “The Girl With All The Gifts tries to put a fresh spin on overripe zombie clichés”, in The Onion AV Club‎

Your daughter, if you have not given her leave,I say again, hath made a gross revolt;Tying her duty, beauty, wit and fortunesIn an extravagant and wheeling strangerOf here and every where.

c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Othello, the Moore of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act I, scene i]

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

1898, Stephen Crane, The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky‎

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.

1912, James Stephens, chapter 8, in The Charwoman’s Daughter‎

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.

1917, A. E. W. Mason, chapter 3, in The Affair at the Semiramis Hotel‎

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.

1922, T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom‎, Introduction, Chapter 5

[…] 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.

1898, Samuel Butler, The Iliad of Homer, Rendered into English Prose‎, Book 17

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.

1931, Robert E. Howard, chapter 2, in Hawks of Outremer‎

[…] Each aloftUpon his narrowed eminence bore globesOf wheeling suns, or stars, or semblancesOf either, showering circular abyssOf radiance.

1829, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Timbuctoo‎, lines 63–67

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.

1917 November, W[illiam] B[utler] Yeats, “The Wild Swans at Coole”, in The Wild Swans at Coole, Other Verses and a Play in Verse, Churchtown, Dundrum [Dublin]: The Cuala Press, page 1

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

1933, Robert Byron, First Russia, Then Tibet‎, Part II, Chapter 8

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.

2014 September 7, Natalie Angier, “The Moon comes around again ”, in The New York Times‎

Now Heav’n in all her Glorie shon, and rowldHer motions, as the great first-Movers handFirst wheeld thir course;

1667, John Milton, “Book VII”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], […]; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, lines 499-501

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:

1751, Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard‎, lines 5–8

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

1839, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Sunrise on the Hills‎