breastwheel

English

Etymology

From breast +‎ wheel.

Alternative forms

breast wheel, breast-wheel

Noun

breastwheel (plural breastwheels)

1. A water wheel where the stream of water strikes neither so high as in the overshot wheel, nor so low as in the undershot, but generally at about half the height of the wheel, being kept in contact with it by the breasting. The water acts on the floatboards partly by impulse, partly by its weight.
   • {{quote-book|en|1889| Alfred R. Wallace|s:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro|section[[s:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro/Chapter 2|text=The saw-mill was recently erected by Mr. Leavens, who is a practical millwright. It is of the kind commonly used in the United States, and the manner of applying the water is rather different from which we generally see in England. There is a fall of water of about ten feet, which, instead of being applied to an overshot or breast-wheel, is allowed to rush out of a longitudinal aperture at the bottom, against the narrow floats of a wheel only twenty inches in diameter, which thus revolves with great velocity, and communicates motion by means of a crank and connecting-rod directly to the saw.}}

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “breastwheel”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)