A kind of firework, in the form of a wheel, which is driven round by the recoil from the explosion of the various squibs of which it is composed.
The firework is named for St. Catherine.
Virgin and martyr of noble birth in Alexandria. She adroitly defended the Christian faith at a public disputation (c. 310) with certain heathen philosophers at the command of Emperor Maximinus, for which she was put on a wheel like that of a chaff-cutter. Legend says that as soon as the wheel turned, her bonds were miraculously broken; so she was beheaded. Hence the name Catherine wheel. She is the patron saint of wheel-wrights.
Source: Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1981).
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