Catherine wheel
- noun
- /ˈkæθərɪn wɪəl/
:
rueda de Catalina
- Catherine wheels were whirling on the chicken coops while rockets zipped off skyward, leaving behind a blaze of purple and gold.
Examples
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During the festival, we watched a Catherine wheel spin and glitter in the night sky.
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Set the Catherine wheel to go off.
Fiction book (1999) -
The Catherine wheel created a stunning display of bright sparks as it rotated quickly.
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As dusk fell, the children squealed with delight while the Catherine wheel lit up the garden.
Synonyms
180
1.9
An object that makes bright lights and loud sounds in the sky when it bursts
3
4.2
A firework that shoots colored balls or sparks into the air
1
7.0
A spinning firework that throws out colored sparks
How Spectacular
Surface Forms
Morphology
Catherine + wheel
The component 'wheel' clearly conveys a round, rotating object, so a learner could infer a spinning or circular thing from the phrase. However, 'Catherine' is a proper name with no lexical clue to 'firework', and the specific sense of a type of spinning firework is lexicalized and must be learned, so the expression is only partially predictable.
Etymology
Catherine wheel comes from one old story about Saint Catherine, who was tied to a spiked wheel as a punishment and the wheel broke. The bright firework turns like that wheel, so the name came to mean 'a spinning firework'.