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.'>
>