Metaphorical Uses
The breaking wheel was also known as a great dishonor, and appeared in several expressions as such. In Dutch, there is the expression opgroeien voor galg en rad, "to grow up for the gallows and wheel," meaning to come to no good. It is also mentioned in the Chilean expression morir en la rueda, "to die at the wheel," meaning to keep silent about something. The Dutch expression ik ben geradbraakt, literally "I have been broken on the wheel", and the German expression sich gerädert fühlen, "to feel wheeled," are used to describe mental exhaustion or hard attempts to remember things, while the Danish expression "radbrækket" refers almost exclusively to physical exhaustion.
In Finnish teilata, "to execute by the wheel," refers to forceful and violent critique or rejection of performance, ideas or innovations. The German verb radebrechen ("to break on the wheel") means abusing the language by speaking incorrectly, with a strong foreign accent etc. Similarly, the Norwegian verb radbrekke is applied to art and language, and refers to use which is seen as despoiling tradition and courtesy, with connotations of willful ignorance and/or malice. The Swedish verb rådbråka (from German radebrechen), is used both as expression for mental exhaustion and for speaking poorly.
The word roué, "dissipated debauchee," is French, and its original meaning was "broken on the wheel." As execution by breaking on the wheel in France and some other countries was reserved for crimes of peculiar atrocity, roué came by a natural process to be understood to mean a man morally worse than a "gallows-bird," a criminal who only deserved hanging for common crimes. He was also a leader in wickedness, since the chief of a gang of brigands (for instance) would be broken on the wheel, while his obscure followers were merely hanged. Philip, Duke of Orléans, who was regent of France from 1715 to 1723, gave the term the sense of impious and callous debauchee, which it has borne since his time, by habitually applying it to the very bad male company who amused his privacy and his leisure. The locus classicus for the origin of this use of the epithet is in the Memoirs of Saint-Simon.
In English, the quotation "Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?" from Alexander Pope's "Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot" is occasionally seen, referring to putting great effort into achieving something minor or unimportant.
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