Word.ws English Dictionary

wheelspin

wheelspin noun: the spinning of the wheels of a vehicle on the surface of the ground with greatly reduced friction and little movement of the vehicle, especially when starting.

wheelspin: the spinning of the wheels of a vehicle on the surface of the ground with greatly reduced friction...
Image: Metropolitan Transportation Authority of the State of New, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

wheelspin (usually uncountable, plural wheelspins)

  1. (usually) The spinning of the wheels of a vehicle on the surface of the ground with greatly reduced friction and little movement of the vehicle, especially when starting.
    • Near-synonym: wheelslip
    • A computer detects wheelspin and reduces power.2009 August 23, Dexter Ford, “Slip-Sliding Suspended”, in New York Times
    Synonyms:
    wheelslip

Verb

wheelspin (third-person singular simple present wheelspins, present participle wheelspinning, simple past wheelspun or wheelspan or wheelspinned, past participle wheelspun or wheelspinned)

  1. To drive with poor traction, so that the vehicle exhibits a wheelspin.
    • It was not unusual to see an ice cream van wheelspin away, dragging a runner into the service hatch as it went, especially on the police patches: […]1992, Martina Cole, Dangerous Lady, Headline, →ISBN, page 186
    • When, suddenly and inexplicably, the car had started he had wheelspun away from the kerb in his effort to keep it going.1997, Siri Reynolds, House of Rooms, Edinburgh: Polygon, →ISBN, page 132
  2. To throw up (debris) from a wheelspin.
    • With only small encouragement from me, and using skills learned on a racing track, he gunned his Land-Rover forward, cut up the saloon and wheelspan a few stones its way as we turned down an unsurfaced track.2007, Anthony Loyd, Another Bloody Love Letter, Headline Review, →ISBN, page 24

Examples of wheelspin in a sentence

  • In the end the Fiesta just wheelspinned off down Deepdale – it was pretty obvious they wouldn’t bring it on the field; it would’ve fallen apart.2007, Richard Milward, Apples, Canongate, →ISBN, page 42:
  • We screamed as we wheelspinned round corners, we made up stories on the dark roads to frighten ourselves, and turned up Junior’s CD to full blast, singing at the top of our voices.2007, Catherine MacPhail, Worse Than Boys, Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN, page 205:
  • Far too quickly for me to peer through the windscreen to check out this nutter on the clutch, the jeepy wheelspinned.2008, Catherine Forde, Sugarcoated, Egmont, →ISBN, page 111:

Synonyms of wheelspin

Forms of wheelspin

Noun
pluralwheelspins
Verb
third-person singular presentwheelspins
present participlewheelspinning
pastwheelspun
pastwheelspan
pastwheelspinned
past participlewheelspun
past participlewheelspinned

Origin of wheelspin

From wheel + spin.

Questions about wheelspin

What does wheelspin mean?
Wheelspin means the spinning of the wheels of a vehicle on the surface of the ground with greatly reduced friction and little movement of the vehicle, especially when starting.
How do you use wheelspin in a sentence?
In the end the Fiesta just wheelspinned off down Deepdale – it was pretty obvious they wouldn’t bring it on the field; it would’ve fallen apart.
What part of speech is wheelspin?
Wheelspin can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of wheelspin?
The plural of wheelspin is wheelspins.

Words near wheelspin in the dictionary

  1. wheelsmen
  2. wheelsmith
  3. wheelsmiths
  4. wheelspan
  5. wheelspans
  6. wheelspin
  7. wheelspinned
  8. wheelspinning
  9. wheelspins
  10. wheelspun
  11. wheelstand

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wheelspin (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “wheelspin.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wheelspin. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.