1. The wheel of a cart.
c. 1386. Chaucer, Sompn. T., 549. Twelf spokes hath a cart whel comunly.
1585. Parsons, Chr. Exerc., II. i. 152. A drye cart wheel … cryeth and complayneth, vnder a small burden.
1858. J. Martineau, Stud. Chr., 342. Armed men, with a clouted shoe and a cart-wheel for their standards.
2. humorously said of a large coin, as a crown or dollar.
1867. A. Sketchley, in Cassell’s Mag., 327/1. So he looks at the money, and says ‘This ’ere cart-wheel’s a duffer.’
1885. Lady Brassey, The Trades, 194–5. The old Spanish doubloons … by irreverent travellers from the United States termed ‘cartwheels.’
3. To turn cart-wheels: to execute a succession of lateral summersaults, as if the feet and hands were spokes of a wheel; also Catherine-wheels. (Street-boys do this by the side of a moving omnibus, etc., for chance coppers thrown to them.)
1845. J. Henry Carleton, in Daily Whig & Courier, 11 Feb., 1/4. He himself, meanwhile, turning various cart-wheels and summersets in his flight.
1864. Sala, in Daily Tel., 23 Dec., 5/4. I absolutely saw a little blackguard boy turning ‘cartwheels’ in front of the Clifton House.
