Wind-up
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For the baseball term, see Windup.
- For the record label, see Wind-Up Records.
Wind-up has three distinct meanings:
- as an adjective, referring to mechanisms, such as clocks, music boxes and clockwork toys, which have a spring that needs to be wound up to store power for operation
- as a verb, to conclude an affair (for example, the winding-up of a company
- as a noun, referring to the torque that exists in a shaft when it is subject to being twisted along its axis.
- As an example of the second meaning, wind-up occurs in main axle of a fixed axle vehicle if it attempts to turn a corner. The inner and outer wheels attempt to follow arcs of different radii, but the fixed axle does not allow them to rotate independently, so the axle is subject to wind-up. It is to prevent wind-up that a differential gearing mechanism is used in road vehicles. Users of Series Land Rovers are advised not to engage four-wheel drive for road use because there is no differential between the front and rear wheels. If this advice is ignored, wind-up can cause the drive shaft linking the front and rear wheels to snap.
or in an analogous sense when a person is put in a stressful situation as a practical joke.
- As when a person is put in the situation of being deliberately led to believe one thing whilst experiencing another, usually in order to evoke an emotional response. In this usage, wind-up can be used as a noun, as in a wind-up, or as a verb, as in to wind someone up. People can also 'snap', i.e. lose their temper, if they suffer a sense of humour failure as a result of a wind-up. Prank phone calls are a type of wind-up commonly used by some radio stations, and a number of TV series, e.g. Candid Camera and Beadle's About, have been based on the entertainment value of making real people feel or appear stupid by means of wind-ups.
When used as a verb, no hyphen is required. The word is also used to mean to bring to an end as in to wind up a meeting. People who have a reputation for performing wind-ups are known as wind-up merchants.
