Another idiom pertaining to “the wheel” is the phrase “put one’s shoulder to the wheel”.
Unlike it is with “put your hands on the wheel,” which is the steering wheel of automobile, this wheel refers to the wheels of a wagon as pulled by, for example, horses.
Horse-pulled carts and wagons have seen better days as a vehicle for transport, suggesting the phrase itself must be aged and old. It is. By definition, “putting one’s shoulder to the wheel” means putting in a great effort in order to accomplish a difficult task.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, one puts their shoulder to the wheel of a wagon “so as to extricate the vehicle from the mire.” Picture the image.
I infer from theOxford explanation that the origin of this phrase might very well be from ancient Greece, or Aesop’s Fable to be exact, for one of Aesop’s proverbs depicted this very image. The tale of Hercules and the Waggoner reads:
A Waggoner was once driving a heavy load along a very muddy way. At last he came to a part of the road where the wheels sank half-way into the mire, and the more the horses pulled, the deeper sank the wheels. So the Waggoner threw down his whip, and knelt down and prayed to Hercules the Strong. “O Hercules, help me in this my hour of distress,” he asks. But Hercules appeared to him, and said: “Tut, man, don’t sprawl there. Get up andput your shoulder to the wheel.”
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