Definition of "bottom gear" []

• The lowest gearing available from a gearbox, typically in a motor vehicle or cycle. (noun)

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• "Nurse Kettle drove in bottom gear to the top of Watt’s Hill and there paused."
• "Alleyn lifted his hat as Nurse Kettle, having engaged her bottom gear with some precipitance, shot past them like a leaping eland."
• "As he shoved the truck down into bottom gear to grind up the far creek bank he looked back for a moment at the empty head stockman’s house, the two vacant houses beyond it; there was the homestead’s soft underbelly, the only place where flammable things came close enough to the trees on the far side of the creek to catch."