roulette

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A gambling game in which the players bet on which slot of a rotating disk a small ball will come to rest in.
2. n. A small toothed disk of tempered steel attached to a handle and used to make rows of dots, slits, or perforations, as in engraving or on a sheet of postage stamps.
3. n. Any of the short consecutive incisions made between individual stamps in a sheet for easy separation.
4. v. To mark or divide with a roulette.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. An engravers' tool, used for producing a series of dots on a copperplate, and in mezzotint to darken any part which has been too much burnished. Roulettes are of two kinds: one is shaped like the rowel of a spur; the other has the rowel at right angles with the shaft, thick in the middle and diminishing toward the sides, which are notched and sharpened to a series of fine points. A similar instrument is used in mechanical drawing, and in plotting. It is dipped into India ink, so that the points imprint a dotted line as the wheel is passed over the paper.
2. n. A cylindrical object used to curl hair upon, whether of the head or of a wig.
3. n. In geometry, a curve traced by any point in the plane of a given curve when this plane rolls on this curve over another curve.
4. n. A game of chance, played at a table, in the center of which is a cavity surmounted by a revolving disk, the circumference of which is generally divided into 38 compartments colored black and red alternately, and numbered 1 to 36, with a zero and double zero. The person in charge of the table (the banker or tailleur) sets the disk in motion, and causes a ball to revolve on it in an opposite direction. This ball finally drops into one of the compartments, thus determining the winning number or color. The players, of whom there may be any number, may stake on a figure or a group of figures, on even or odd number, or on the black or red. Should the player stake on a single figure and be successful, he wins 35 times his stake. The amount varies in the event of success on other chances.
5. To mark with dotted lines with a roulette.
6. To perforate with a roulette or similar instrument, as in preparing blank checks, for ease and convenience in removal from a stub, or sheets of printed postage-stamps for the separation of the stamps, the one from the other, when needed.

Wiktionary

1. n. uncountable A game of chance, in which a small ball is made to move round rapidly on a circle divided off into numbered red and black spaces, the one on which it stops indicating the result of a variety of wagers permitted by the game.
2. n. countable A small toothed wheel used by engravers to roll over a plate in order to produce rows of dots.
3. n. countable A similar wheel used to roughen the surface of a plate, as in making alterations in a mezzotint.
4. n. countable (geometry) The locus of a point on a plane curve that rolls without slipping along another fixed plane curve.
5. n. any of the small incisions on a sheet of stamps, used as an alternative to perforations.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A game of chance, in which a small ball is made to move round rapidly on a circle divided off into numbered red and black spaces, the one on which it stops indicating the result of a variety of wagers permitted by the game.
2. n. A small toothed wheel used by engravers to roll over a plate in order to order to produce rows of dots.
3. n. A similar wheel used to roughen the surface of a plate, as in making alterations in a mezzotint.
4. n. (Geom.) the curve traced by any point in the plane of a given curve when the latter rolls, without sliding, over another fixed curve. See Cycloid, and Epycycloid.
5. n. A small toothed wheel used to make short incisions in paper, as a sheet of postage stamps to facilitate their separation.
6. v. To make short incisions in with a roulette; to separate by incisions made with a roulette.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a wheel with teeth for making a row of perforations
2. n. a gambling game in which players bet on which compartment of a revolving wheel a small ball will come to rest in
3. n. a line generated by a point on one figure rolling around a second figure