[from slang `big wheel' for a powerful person] A person who has an
active {wheel bit}. "We need to find a wheel to unwedge the hung tape
drives." (See {wedged}, sense 1.) The traditional name of security
group zero in {BSD} (to which the major system-internal users like
{root} belong) is `wheel'. Some vendors have expanded on this usage,
modifying Unix so that only members of group `wheel' can {go root}.
[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {peon}{root}{superuser}{wizard}]