free wheel, free-wheel
[free a. 14.]
The rear wheel of a bicycle arranged so that it can rotate freely while the pedals remain stationary; in a machine other than a bicycle, a wheel, propeller, etc. that can run free of a clutch or other connection with the machine itself; also attrib. and absol. (= a bicycle with a free wheel).
| 1899 Westm. Gaz. 17 Nov. 7/1 The free-wheel device..is..the novelty of the show. 1900 Isle of Man Exam. 3 Nov. 7 The recent free wheel contests. 1901 Westm. Gaz. 18 Sept. 8/1 Injuries sustained while riding a free-wheel machine down Knockholt Hill. 1902 A. C. Harmsworth et al. Motors x. 217 Free-wheel steering gear. 1902 E. Nesbit Five Children & It ix. 240 There..stood a bicycle—a beautiful new free-wheel. 1912 W. Owen Let. 6 Feb. (1967) 114 My bicycle is quite disabled now—the free-wheel having worn out. 1930 Engineering 7 Feb. 163/1 Free wheels or over-running clutches are referred to. 1958 Ibid. 7 Mar. 298/1 There was a free-wheel arrangement between the air turbine and the alternator. |
Hence
free-wheel v. intr., to ride with the wheel that is normally driven rotating freely; to operate as a free wheel;
free-wheeled a., having a free wheel;
free-wheeler, a free-wheel bicycle;
free-wheeling vbl. n. and ppl. a. Also
transf. (of lawn-mowers, etc.).
| 1900 Captain III. 80/2 All these free wheeled machines made a clicking noise. 1903 Motor Cycle 31 Mar. 10/2 There is nothing incongruous in the sight of a club of bicyclists..some of them propelling their bicycles by muscular power at all times, except when free-wheeling downhill. 1905 Mosquito Aug. 4 They thoroughly enjoyed the ride coming back and free-wheeled the whole way. 1908 E. M. Sneyd-Kynnersley H.M.I. viii. 78 It was the first year of ‘free-wheelers’. 1932 Oxford Times 23 Sept. 22/3 Free-wheeling and syncro-mesh gears have for some time been almost universal on cars built in the United States. 1935 Jrnl. R. Aeronaut. Soc. XXXIX. 1025 The drag of the propeller when locked in position, or free-wheeling. Ibid. 1026 Above 13° blade-angle setting the free-wheeling propeller has less drag. 1936 A. Brunel Film Production 16 Their principal camera developed a strange habit of ‘free-wheeling’ intermittently. 1970 Which? Mar. 83/1 The cutting cylinders of most of the mowers free-wheeled. |
| fig. 1911 ‘I. Hay’ Safety Match iii. 48 For a moment he was silent—free-wheeling, so to speak, over the pulverised remains of Mr. Winch. 1931 M. De la Bédoyère Drift of Democracy iii. 49 Romanticism glides along free-wheeling wheresoever the mood suggests. 1944 Auden Sea & Mirror (1945) ii. 45 Had you..really left me alone to go my whole free-wheeling way to disorder. 1956 M. Stearns Story of Jazz (1957) vii. 67 In a free-wheeling music such as jazz, a musician is judged by his capacity for sustained and swinging improvisation. 1958 Times 24 Nov. p. viii/5 At the other end of the scale from free-wheeling Quebec are its neighbours on the east. 1966 Listener 20 Jan. 111/3 He saw drama as something halfway between a poem and a prose narrative, a balance between formalism and free-wheeling. 1967 A. Battersby Network Analysis (ed. 2) xiv. 237 He must then ask what is the maximum period for which the project can be allowed to free-wheel without serious departures from the plan occurring. |