Other forms: wheels, wheeling, wheeled
A wheel is the round part that turns and lets a vehicle roll. Four wheels, the front wheel, behind the wheel.
It works with an axle, and the pair together is the actual invention — a disc alone does nothing. It appears about 3500 BC, later than farming and writing, which surprises people. Behind the wheel means driving. Note reinvent the wheel; the wheels came off; and wheelie bin, wheelbarrow, wheelchair, all named from the thing that makes them work.
1nounwheelThe round part that turns and lets a vehicle roll.
“He got a flat tyre and had to change the wheel at the side of the road.”
2verbpushTo push something on wheels, or to turn suddenly.
“The nurse wheeled the patient into the operating room.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
wheel is a rotating part.
Old English hweol goes back to a Proto-Indo-European reduplication of a root meaning to turn. Cycle, chakra and the Greek kyklos come from the same turning.
Middle English
whel
English, today
wheel
Built from
From Middle English whel. From Middle English whel, from Old English hwēol, from Proto-West Germanic hwehwl, from Proto-Germanic hwehwlą, hweulō, from Proto-Indo-European kʷekʷlóm, kʷékʷlos, kʷékʷléh₂, reduplication of kʷel- (“to turn”) and a suffix (literally "(the thing that) turns and turns"). See also West Frisian tsjil, Dutch wiel, Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk and Swedish hjul; also txb kokale (“cart, wagon”), Ancient Greek κύκλος (“cycle, wheel”), ae 𐬗𐬀𐬑𐬭𐬀, Sanskrit चक्र; and Latin colō (“to till, cultivate”), xto - and txb käl- (“to bear; bring”), Ancient Greek πέλω (“to come into existence, become”), cu коло (“wheel”), Albanian sjell (“to bring, carry, turn around”), ae 𐬗𐬀𐬭𐬀𐬌𐬙𐬌 (“it circulates”), Sanskrit चरति (“it moves, wanders”). a doublet of chakra and chakram and charkha and chukker and cycle and cyclus and kike.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA