differential gear

1. 1.

   a bevel gear that permits rotation of two shafts at different speeds; used on the rear axle of automobiles to allow wheels to rotate at different speeds on curves

   Synonymsdifferential

   Broaderbevel gear

Questions about differential gear

What does differential gear mean?

differential gear means "a bevel gear that permits rotation of two shafts at different speeds; used on the rear axle of automobiles to allow wheels to rotate at different speeds on curves".

What is another word for differential gear?

Close synonyms include differential. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is differential gear a common word?

differential gear is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.