A wheelwright was a skilled worker whose job was making and mending wooden wheels — the tall spoked wheels of carts, wagons and horse-drawn carriages. It was a serious trade with years of training: shaping the spokes, fitting them into the hub, then heating an iron rim and shrinking it on tight. Because cars and rubber tyres replaced carts, the job almost disappeared, so we nearly always meet the word in the past tense, in history books, museums, and stories set long ago. A few wheelwrights still work today, restoring old carriages. The word also lives on as a very common family name, Wheelwright, in the same way Smith and Baker do — surnames in English often came from a family's old trade. It is a countable noun. Note the spelling: it ends -wright, with a silent w and gh, and it sounds exactly like "right" and "write", which trips up nearly everyone.

（舊時的）車輪匠、造輪師傅；也是常見的英文姓氏