🦶 A foot lever 🦶 To use foot lever 👣 To press by foot

to treadle

9.1

To run a machine by pressing a foot lever

verb
/ˈtrɛdəl/

Specialized

: accionar

One of my earliest memories is of my mom sewing at that treadle machine in Babcia's big country kitchen and of being allowed to treadle the machine when she was finished.

Examples

But humans find it easier to treadle—as in the pump organ example—rather than pump a handle up and down with their arms.

Academic text (2011)
Various tenement apartments on the Lower East Side are installed with sewing machines treadled by women.

Fiction book (2001)
They had a machine they modified with a foot treadle so that every time they move their foot, it would make one stitch.
She learned to treadle the sewing machine by pressing the foot pedal gently.
To start the vintage sewing machine, he had to treadle with his foot in a steady rhythm.
As the children took turns, they eagerly treadled the machine, watching the fabric come to life.

Surface Forms

treadle infinitive

treadled past

treadled past participle

treadling present participle

treadles third person singular

Etymology

Treadle comes from the same root tread meaning 'to step'. So to treadle something is to operate it by stepping on a foot lever and making the machine move.