wheelwright

See also: Wheelwright

English

This wheelwright is tapping a felloe onto a spoke.
This reenactor is portraying a wheelwright.

Etymology

From Middle English whelwryghte; equivalent to wheel +‎ wright.

Pronunciation

  • (US) enPR: wēl'-rīt
  • Audio (US):(file)
  • Audio (Southern England):(file)

Noun

wheelwright (plural wheelwrights)

  2. (chiefly historical) A person who builds and repairs wheels, especially wooden spoked ones.
    Synonym: wheelmaker
    Hypernyms: wright < person
    Near-synonym: wheelsmith
    • 1971, George Ewart Evans, Tools of Their Trades: An Oral History of Men at Work c. 1900‎[1], Taplinger Publishing Company, →ISBN, page 32:
      The wheels are the wright's distinguishing mark of his trade. It is the wheels that separate him off from the craft of carpenter: a wheelwright is equal to any job in the carpenter's craft but a carpenter cannot make a wheel [with commensurate quality and speed]. Percy Wilson [a wheelwright interviewed by the author] confessed that making the body of a Scotch cart—or of any vehicle for that matter—was a much simpler job than making the wheels […]
    • 2020, J. K. Rowling [pseudonym; Joanne Rowling], “Chapter 36: Cornucopia Hungry”, in The Ickabog‎[2], First American edition (Physical Hardcover), New York City: Scholastic, →ISBN, page 150:
      Up in the northern cities, though, people were struggling. More and more businesses — shops, taverns, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, farms, and vineyards — were closing down.
      Footnote: In the first American physical edition (hardcover) of this book, the page number for this quote is page 150 and not 170.

Derived terms

Translations

This page is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.