rowel

rowel (plural rowels)

1. The small spiked wheel on the end of a spur.

   • 1819, The deep and sharp rowels with which Ivanhoe’s heels were now armed, began to make the worthy Prior repent of his courtesy — Walter Scott, Ivanhoe
   • 1936, The dry desert of my native land, her men grey and gaunt, their spines twisted, their feet shod with rowel and spur. — Henry Miller, Black Spring
   • 1973, The Lone Ranger will storm in at the head of a posse, rowels tearing blood from the stallion’s white hide, to find his young friend, innocent Dan, swinging from a tree limb by a broken neck. — Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow
   • 1992, He nodded at the Americans. Buena suerte, he said. He put the long rowels of his spurs to the horse and they moved on. — Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

2. A little flat ring or wheel on a horse's bit.  [quotations ▼]
3. A roll of hair, silk, etc., passed through the flesh of a horse in the manner of a seton in human surgery.