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.'