training wheels

English

WOTD – 12 August 2022

Etymology

From training wheel +‎ -s (suffix forming pluralia tantum and regular plurals of nouns).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈtɹeɪnɪŋ wiːlz/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈtreɪnɪŋ ˌ(h)wilz/
• Hyphenation: train‧ing wheels

Noun

training wheels pl (plural only)

1. (figuratively) Anything designed to make something easier for a novice.
   • 2007 September 25, Bungie, Halo 3, spoken by Avery Johnson (David Scully), Microsoft Game Studios, Xbox 360, level/area: Arrival:

     Kick off the training wheels, Corporal. He's good to go.

   • 2019 August 14, A. A. Dowd, “Good Boys Puts a Tween Spin on the R-rated Teen Comedy, to Mostly Funny Effect”, in The A.V. Club‎^[1], archived from the original on 4 March 2021:

     Yet as with Booksmart, the summer's earlier riff on that Apatovian classic, there are times when Good Boys feels a little too nice to actually be uproarious. In more ways than one, it's the training wheels for a better comedy—a slightly edgier and funnier one.

Derived terms

• with training wheels

Translations

anything designed to make something easier for a novice

• Finnish: apuvälineet pl, apupyörät pl
• Polish: pomoc (pl) f
• Spanish: please add this translation if you can

Noun

training wheels

1. plural of training wheel

Further reading

• training wheels on Wikipedia.Wikipedia