Date: Mon, 1 Dec 1997 15:41:08 -0600

From: wachal robert s rwachal[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]BLUE.WEEG.UIOWA.EDU

Subject: Re: Trouble Hunters on WHEELS



Well it was also used in Scandinavian Fargo, North Dakota, in ca. 1940

when my 4th-grade teacher ammpomced that a classmate "will not be in

school today because she had a mishap on her wheel." I understood her but

thought it a very odd way to put it. Perhaps I understood because I grew

up reading stories from children's books of the 1920's and earlier.



Bob Wachal



On Mon, 1 Dec 1997, Peter Richardson wrote:





"While riding his wheel he was

bitten by a dog. ... "



I wonder how may people know that WHEEL once commonly meant 'bicycle'? My

Iowa great-grandmother (b. 1860) regularly used this slang (?) term, and I

think also her daughters and her daughters' husbands used it. Farmer&Henley

list this usage, but give no noun cites. Chapman does not list it, nor does

Beale/Partridge.



This might be a loan translation of German Rad 'wheel,' probably used in

German-speaking Iowa a century ago just as it's still used today in

Germany for 'bicycle.'