Spinning-wheel

Full definition of spinning-wheel

Noun

• Eliot Adam Bede|volume=II|page=5|passage=... while the noonday light, softened perhaps by a screen of leaves, falls on her mob-cap, and just touches the rim of her spinning-wheel, and her stone jug, and all those cheap common things which are the precious necessaries of life to her;—...
• 1868, J. C. Atkinson, A Glossary of the Cleveland Dialect: Explanatory, Derivative, and Critical, In the days of spinning-wheels and home-woven cloth, &c., it was customary to affix Swatches to the various rolls of cloth sent to the dyer's, which in this part of w
• 1870, Sketches from the Border Land; or, A Daughter of England, Among much that was curious, there were tables with raised edges of delicate workmanship, holding some fine old china; there was a small oak spinning-wheel, on which my grandmother spun; and standing alone, too modern for its surroundings, was a piano-forté, on which Miss Green played.
• 1886, w:Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, Folk and Fairy Tales, Round about them was a circle of girls and wives of the neighbouring tenants; "they trod the spinning-wheels with diligent feet, or were using the scraping carding-combs," as an author has it.
• 2018, w:Théophile Gautier, The Child Whose Shoes Were Made of Bread, Her modest dwelling was sparsely furnished: an old bed with spiral bedposts and curtains of yellowed serge; a hutch where she kneaded and kept bread; a chest of walnut, clean and shiny but riddled with wormholes plugged with wax, testimony to long years of service; a chair with faded upholstery worn out at the top by her grandmother’s trembling head; a spinning-wheel sleek and smooth from use.