big wheel

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noun Informal.

an influential or important person: a big wheel in business.

Origin:
1905–10

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
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Link To big wheel

Collins

World English Dictionary

big wheel

—n
1.	another name for a Ferris wheel
2.	informal an important person

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
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00:10

Big wheel is always a great word to know.

So is flibbertigibbet. Does it mean:

a chattering or flighty, light-headed person.

a screen or mat covered with a dark material for shielding a camera lens from excess light or glare.

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Dictionary.com's 21st Century Lexicon

Main Entry:	big wheel
Part of Speech:	n
Definition:	See big cheese

Dictionary.com's 21st Century Lexicon
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Slang Dictionary

big wheel definition

n.
a very important person. : Some big wheel wrote the order. Don't blame me.

Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition.
Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.
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American Heritage

Idioms & Phrases

big wheel

see under big cheese.

Matching Quote

"As we walked homeward across the fields, the sun dropped and lay like a great golden globe in the low west. While it hung there, the moon rose in the east, as big as a cart-wheel, pale silver and streaked with rose colour, thin as a bubble or a ghost-moon. For five, perhaps ten minutes, the two luminaries confronted each other across the level land, resting on opposite edges of the world.
In that singular light every little tree and shock of wheat, every sunflower stalk and clump of snow-on-the-mountain, drew itself up high and pointed; the very clods and furrows in the fields seemed to stand up sharply. I felt the old pull of the earth, the solemn magic that comes out of those fields at nightfall. I wished I could be a little boy again, and that my way could end there."

-Willa Cather

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Idioms & Phrases

big cheese