Other forms: pulleys
A pulley is a wheel and rope that let one person lift a great weight. A block and pulley, rig a pulley, the pulley system.
One alone only changes the direction of your pull. It is having several that multiplies the force: with four rope sections supporting the load you pull with a quarter of the weight and four times as far, which is the whole bargain.
1nounpulleyA wheel and rope that let one person lift a great weight.
“The builders used a pulley to raise the heavy beams up to the roof.”
pulley is a device.
Old French poulie names the wheel, probably from a Greek word for a pivot or axis.
Proto-Indo-European
*kʷel- — to turn
Ancient Greek
πολίδιον — little pivot
Medieval Latin
polidia
Old French
poulie
Middle English
puly
English, today
pulley
Built from
From Middle English puly, poley, from Old French poulie, polie (“a pulley, windlass”), from Medieval Latin polidia, plural mistaken for the feminine of neuter polidium, from Ancient Greek πολίδιον (“little pivot”), diminutive of πόλος (“pivot, hinge, axis”), from Proto-Indo-European kʷel- (“to turn”). Associated with pull by folk etymology.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA