cog-wheel
[see cog n.2]
a. A wheel with cogs, used to transmit motion; more generally, a toothed wheel which engages with another similar wheel, or with a toothed bar or rack; a gear-wheel.
| 1416–39 in Rogers Agric. & Prices III. 547; ibid. 551. 1450 Voc. in Wr.-Wülcker 610/27 Scoriaballum, a cogwhele. 1523 Fitzherb. Surv. xl, The cogge whele in a corne mylne is a great helper. 1660 W. D'Acres Water Drawing 38 Moved with cogg wheels and trundles. 1846 Joyce Sci. Dial. ii. 197 These racks are moved up and down by means of a little cog-wheel. 1879 Cassell's Techn. Educ. I. 20/2 A cog-wheel, a name generally understood to mean a wheel in which the teeth are made of wood and mortised separately into an iron rim. |
| fig. 1837 Marryat Dog-fiend ix, The cog-wheels of life have need of much oiling. |
b. cog-wheel railway,
system, a mountain-railway system using a cog-rail (see
cog n.2 6); a rack railway.
| 1904 Westm. Gaz. 4 May 10/1 Lines up the mountains and over the passes worked on the cog-wheel system. 1907 Ibid. 24 July 1/3 The circuitous cog-wheel railway connecting Csorba with Csorba-tó. 1963 Economist 30 Nov. 911/3 Cogwheel railways, an earlier method of getting up steep mountain sides. |
Hence
cog-wheelery, cog-wheel gearing.
| 1884 A. A. Putnam 10 Years Police Judge xxiii. 202 Society runs itself without the machinery and cog-wheelery of codes and constables. |