name, noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
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"These pulleys […] placed collaterally."
"[a mine]is digg'd out with ease, being soft, and is between a white Clay and Chalk at first; but being pulley'd up with the open Air, it receives a crusty kind of hardness"
"The screw, the lever, the wedge, the pulley, etc. are called simple machines."
One of the simple machines; a sheave, a wheel with a grooved rim, in which a pulled rope or chain lifts an object (more useful when two or more pulleys are used together, as in a block and tackle arrangement, such that a small force moving through a greater distance can exert a larger force through a smaller distance).
Common synonyms include: block, block and tackle, compound pulley, grooved wheel, pulley block, pulley system.
The screw, the lever, the wedge, the pulley, etc. are called simple machines.
Pronounced /ˈpʊli/.
From Middle English puly, poley, from Old French poulie, polie (“a pulley, windlass”), from Medieval Latin polidia, plural mistaken for the feminine of neuter polidium, from Ancient Greek πολίδιον (polídion, “little pivot”), diminutive of πόλος (pólos, “pivot, hinge, axis”), from Proto-Indo-European *kʷel- (“to turn”). Associated with pull (verb) by folk etymology.