A pawl is a sort of catch that fits into a ratchet wheel and pushes it around, or it may be used as a catch to prevent the backward motion of a windlass or the wheel on a derrick.
Source: wiktionary
Pawl
//pɔːl//
Synonyms for "pawl" (7 found)
Ranked by relevance and common usage.
Related word relations
OpenGloss and ConceptNet supply richer edges like generalizations, collocations, and derivations.
Translations
16 translations across 13 languages.
Bulgarian
2 entries- език noun (pawl)
- палец noun (pawl)
Chinese Mandarin
1 entries- 千斤 noun (pawl)
Dutch
1 entries- pal noun (pawl)
Esperanto
1 entries- kliko noun (pawl)
Finnish
1 entries- lukituskynsi noun (pawl)
French
1 entries- cliquet noun (pawl)
German
3 entries- Klaue noun (pawl)
- Klinke noun (pawl)
- Sperrklinke noun (pawl)
Italian
1 entries- cricchetto noun (pawl)
Japanese
1 entries- 歯止め noun (pawl)
Norwegian Bokmål
1 entries- pal noun (pawl)
Polish
1 entries- zapadka noun (pawl)
Russian
1 entries- соба́чка noun (pawl)
Spanish
1 entries- matraca noun (pawl)
Sample sentences
2 total sentences available.
The nails in the rim of the wheel went ratcheting over the leather pawl and the wheel slowed and came to a stop and the woman turned to the crowd and smiled.
Source: wiktionary
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.