breastwheel

English

Etymology

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 float boards partly by impulse, partly by its weight.

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 The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.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.)