Definition of "pinwheel" [pinwheel]

• A toy consisting of vanes of colored paper or plastic pinned to a stick so that they revolve when blown on. (noun)
• A firework that forms a rotating wheel of colored flames. Also called catherine wheel. (noun)
• A wheel with a circle of pins at right angles to its face, used as a tripping device. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "But Ginny, out of character for her, offered a bribe: A brightly colored pinwheel from a nearby stand."
• "April is Child Abuse Prevention Month, and the pinwheel will be the symbol used to represent the effort to increase awareness, Montgomery County Commissioner Judy Dodge said."
• "I, a rootless cosmopolitan and a linguist to boot which means I have no trustworthy native-speaker intuitions, think I say "pinwheel," but the subject comes up so rarely I can't be sure; at any rate, it sounds more familiar to me."