Dictionary: horse   (hôrs)

1. 1. A large hoofed mammal (Equus caballus) having a short-haired coat, a long mane, and a long tail, domesticated since ancient times and used for riding and for drawing or carrying loads.
   2. An adult male horse; a stallion.
   3. Any of various equine mammals, such as the wild Asian species E. przewalskii or certain extinct forms related ancestrally to the modern horse.
2. A frame or device, usually with four legs, used for supporting or holding.
3. Sports. A vaulting horse.
4. Slang. Heroin.
5. Horsepower. Often used in the plural.
6. Mounted soldiers; cavalry: a squadron of horse.
7. Geology.
   1. A block of rock interrupting a vein and containing no minerals.
   2. A large block of displaced rock that is caught along a fault.

1. To provide with a horse.
2. To haul or hoist energetically: “Things had changed little since the days of the pyramids, with building materials being horsed into place by muscle power” (Henry Allen).

To be in heat. Used of a mare.

1. Of or relating to a horse: a horse blanket.
2. Mounted on horses: horse guards.
3. Drawn or operated by a horse.
4. Larger or cruder than others that are similar: horse pills.

horse around Informal.

1. To indulge in horseplay or frivolous activity: Stop horsing around and get to work.

a horse of another (or a different) color

1. Another matter entirely; something else.

1. To continue to pursue a cause that has no hope of success.
2. To dwell tiresomely on a matter that has already been decided.

1. To be or become disdainful, superior, or conceited.

1. To restrain oneself.

1. A source of information regarded as original or unimpeachable.

[Middle English, from Old English hors.]

Equus caballus; a 150-g portion is an exceptionally rich source of iron; a rich source of protein and niacin, and a source of vitamins B₁ and B₂; contains about 5 g of fat, of which one-third is saturated; supplies 175 kcal (735 kJ).

Idioms beginning with horse:
horse around
horse of a different color, a
horse sense
horse trading

See also back the wrong horse; beat a dead horse; cart before the horse; change horses in midstream; charley horse; dark horse; eat like a bird (horse); from the horse's mouth; hold one's horses; if wishes were horses; look a gift horse in the mouth; on one's high horse; war horse; wild horses couldn't drag; work like a beaver (horse); you can lead a horse to water.

power. Symbol h.p. BI 1809 550 ft·lb·s^-1 (745.699 872~ W), originally the rounded estimated rate of working of a typical horse (when trudging a circle endlessly, dragging a boom to power machinery), and a unit notably not coherent within any system. (The term appears to have been coined by Watt for promoting his steam engine.)

The h.p. of a petrol engine can be expressed on a theoretical basis of power at source (indicated and nominal horse power) or as available power external to the engine (brake horse power or b.h.p.). The last, generally reckoned as the power available at 4 000 revolutions per minute, is of the order of 80 to 200 for a typical car. In contrast, the horse power figure used for taxing cars in the UK up to 1947 was of the order of 8 to 20; this was a notional calculation, proportional to the aggregate cross-sectional area of the cylinders, i.e.

= 0.4 × D²·N

(click to enlarge)
External features of a horse. (credit: © Merriam-Webster Inc.)

Equine species (Equus caballus) long used by humans as a means of transport and as a draft animal. Its earliest ancestor was the dawn horse (see Eohippus). The only living horse not descended from the domestic horse is Przewalski's horse. The horse was apparently first domesticated by nomadic peoples of Central Asia in the 3rd millennium BC. For many centuries horses were primarily used in warfare. The saddle was introduced in China in the first centuries AD. Horses were reintroduced to the New World, after wild horses had become extinct there some 10,000 years earlier, by the Spanish in the 16th century. A mature male is called a stallion or, if used for breeding, a stud; mature females are called mares. A castrated stallion is called a gelding. Young horses (foals) are also known as colts (males) and fillies (females). A horse's height is measured in 4-in. (10.2-cm) units, or hands, from the highest point of the back (withers) to the ground. Breeds are classified by size and build: draft (heavy) horses (e.g., Belgian, Percheron) are heavy-limbed and up to 20 hands high; ponies (e.g., Shetland, Iceland) are less than 14.2 hands high; and light horses (e.g., Arabian, Thoroughbred) are intermediate, rarely taller than 17 hands.

For more information on horse, visit Britannica.com.

In folk tradition, horses were regarded as very vulnerable to supernatural attack; in particular, their night sweats and exhaustion were interpreted as due to hagriding by witches or fairies, from whom they must be protected by holed stones. Their tendency to shy or refuse to move on, for no visible reason, was (and still often is) attributed to a psychic awareness of the presence of evil, for example in haunted spots and those where blood has been shed. It was also thought that they could be immobilized, tamed, or rendered restive by people with magical power; one of the recurrent tales about witches and cunning men was that they would keep a horse spellbound by a word. In some regions, notably East Anglia, men particularly skilled in working farm horses had secret ways of controlling them, apparently by a mixture of magical ritual and material means such as substances whose smell attracted or repelled them (see Horseman's word, and toadmen).

Horse skulls are occasionally found under floorboards in old buildings, for instance at Thrimby Hall (Bedfordshire) in 1860, and in Bungay (Suffolk) in 1933. It is tempting to see this as magical house protection, but the explanation given by the householders was that they improved the acoustics for home music-making, and this is supported by Irish and Scandinavian instances where the resonance of a horse skull was thought desirable in churches and threshing barns (Merrifield, 1987: 123-6). On the other hand, the purpose of a horse skull with two boar's tusks embedded in its jaw, found in the wall of an 18th-century house at Ballaugh (Isle of Man) can only have been protective (Folklore 100 (1989), 105-9). Several horse bones were found between two courses of brick of a 16th-century cottage in Histon, and a leg-bone under the foundations of stables of a 16th-century inn in Cambridge (Porter, 1969: 180-1).

The Norfolk writer W. H. Barrett remembered seeing a skull laid down in 1897, when he was six. He and his brother were sent to a knacker's yard to buy a horse's head for their uncle, who was building a Methodist chapel in Littleport:

When the two boys returned with it they watched the workmen dig the trench for the foundations and then saw their uncle carefully mark the centre of the site by driving into the ground a wooden stake. The men gathered round while the uncle uncorked a bottle of beer, then the horse's head was placed in the bottom of the trench, the first glass of liquor from the bottle was thrown on it, and, when the rest of the beer had been drunk, the men shovelled bricks and mortar on top of the head. It was explained to W. H. Barrett that this was an old heathen custom to drive evil and witchcraft away. (Porter, 1969: 181).

Bibliography
The full bibliography list is available here.

• Opie and Tatem, 1989: 201-2, 305-6
• Radford, Radford, and Hole, 1961: 193-8
• Roud, 2003: 253-7

1. See sawhorse.
2. See carriage.
3. Framing used as a temporary support.

The horse in America dates at least from the single-hoofed Equus caballus that emerged in Pleistocene times, about 1 million years ago. Ancestors of the modern horse began a westward migration from North America across the land bridge between the north coast of Alaska and that of Siberia. Some paleontologists suspect that the horse disappeared in America not more than, and possibly less than, 10,000 years ago.

The horse was reintroduced into the Western Hemisphere with the voyages of discovery by Christopher Columbus for Spain at the end of the fifteenth century. These Spanish steeds, derived from Moorish stock, first landed in the Caribbean in November 1493. The Spanish horses acclimated rapidly and within twenty years formed the chief supply for the Spanish mainland expeditions. Other European explorers brought horses to eastern and western parts of the New World in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. English colonists imported European horses. In the British colonies as a whole, horses were valued for riding, hunting, and racing.

The adoption of the horse by Native Americans, after the initial impact, increased rapidly and proved a major implement of change for the nomadic Plains tribes. By 1660, Indians had learned the value of horses and had begun to use them. During the next forty years the horse spread into the plains and mountains with great rapidity. In 1805 and 1806 Meriwether Lewis and William Clark noted the use of horses by Indians. With horses, the Kiowa ranged more than 1,000 miles in a summer. Some eastern forest tribes, once partially agricultural, moved out into the grassland with acquired horses and turned to hunting. The equestrian tribes were often at war with one another and raided white settlements to steal more horses.

Horses were crucial for transportation and inland migration prior to the development of the railroad. Extractive industries, manufacturers, and city distributive systems were all dependent on horsepower. The stagecoach was the first inland interregional utility, and the post rider opened communication with outlying settlements. Horses drew canal boats and railcars and served hunters, trappers, and miners. Cow horses carried cowboys on long cattle drives, herding livestock. The night horse was used to stand guard. Cavalry mounts and supply teams were adjuncts of military organizations and campaigning on every front. Approximately 1,500,000 horses and mules died during the Civil War (1861–1865).

The twentieth-century revolution worked by the internal combustion engine resulted in a displacement of horses for power and transportation. Tractor-drawn corn planters could plant an average of seventy acres of corn, compared to a horse-drawn average of only sixteen acres. From about 26 million farm horses and mules in the United States in 1920, the number declined to slightly more than 3 million horses and mules on farms in 1960.

American Breeds

American horse breeders carefully selected breeding stock and monitored pedigrees in an attempt to cultivate desired characteristics. Sometimes especially swift or capable horses were produced by chance. Superb horses were occasionally discovered and of unknown parentage. These animals were retained as studs or broodmares in the hopes that their talents or physical attributes would be transmitted to offspring. As a result, breeds unique to the United States were developed, especially in the twentieth century, to meet performance needs. Breed associations were formed to preserve genetic records and promote specific types of horses.

The American Quarter Horse is the first horse breed distinctive to the United States. Descended from a mixture of American breeds and imported bloodstock during the colonial period, Quarter Horses are exceptionally sturdy, muscular, versatile, and fast. They accompanied Americans from Atlantic colonies to the western frontier, where they were valued for their cow sense. Cattlemen, including those at the famous King Ranch in Kingsville, Texas, developed outstanding lines of Quarter Horses. One of the King Ranch Quarter Horses, Wimpy, was named grand champion stallion at the 1941 Fort Worth Exposition. The American Quarter Horse Association, founded in 1940, assigned Wimpy its first registration number, and he became a leading foundation sire. Quarter Horses fill many roles. The All-American Futurity at Ruidoso Downs, New Mexico, distributes a $2 million purse to Quarter Horses that sprint 440 yards. The American Quarter Horse Heritage Center and Museum at Amarillo, Texas, preserves this breed's history.

Justin Morgan's horse Figure, foaled in Massachusetts in 1793, founded a line notable not only for speed but also for light draft. Rhode Island developed one of the most distinctive and noted types of the period in the Narragansett pacer, a fast, easy-gaited saddle horse, but one not suited for driving or draft purposes. The stylishly moving American Saddlebred represents a mixture of Narragansett Pacer, Arabian, Standardbred, and Thoroughbred ancestors. Established in 1891, The American Saddle Horse Breeder's Association (later renamed American Saddlebred Horse Association) was the first American breed association, and Denmark was designated the main foundation sire.

Tennessee Walking Horses represent a conglomeration of breeds which produced a gaited horse that is renowned for its running walk. This breed is based on the line of foundation sire Allan F-1. The Racking Horse has a comfortable, natural four-beat gait which southern planters valued. Ozark settlers bred the Missouri Fox Trotter, which had a sliding gait that eased travel in hilly areas.

Most modern Appaloosas are related to the horses bred by the Nez Perce Indians. These spotted horses often also have Quarter Horse, Thoroughbred, and Arabian ancestry. Joker B. and Colida were two of the Appaloosa Horse Club's outstanding foundation stallions after that association was formed in 1938. The Pony of the Americas (POA) was created by crossing an Appaloosa mare and a Shetland pony stallion. The resulting foal, Black Hand, became the POA foundation sire, establishing a breed especially for children to ride and show.

The American Cream Draft Horse is the sole draft breed created in the United States. Representatives of this breed are descended from a pink-skinned, cream-colored Iowa mare named Old Granny. After mechanization resulted in the slaughter of many draft horses, the American Minor Breeds Conservancy cited the American Cream Draft Horse as an endangered breed.

Horse Culture

By the beginning of the twenty-first century, 6.9 million horses were living in the United States and were used by 1.9 million horse owners for recreational or commercial purposes. Approximately one-half of American horses are kept for their owners to enjoy and ride for pleasure. About one-third of horses are used primarily for shows and competitions. An estimated 725,000 horses race or are used as broodmares and studs on racehorse farms. Slightly more than one million horses fill working roles such as agricultural laborers and police mounts. Others are used as rodeo stock or for polo teams.

Although horses are found throughout the United States, Kentucky's Bluegrass region is specifically identified with equines. The center of American horse racing activity, Kentucky is home to major racing stables and tracks. The Kentucky Horse Park and the International Museum of the Horse were established at Lexington, Kentucky, in 1978 to educate people about horses and to host significant equine-related artistic, cultural, and sporting events. This thousand-acre site includes the Hall of Champions and the grave of the famous racehorse Man o' War. The museum is the world's largest equestrian museum and examines the history of human-horse interactions, providing online access to exhibits via the Internet. The daily Parade of Breeds highlights representatives of distinctive American horse breeds.

Pony, 4-H, and local riding clubs offer opportunities for equestrians to learn about horses. Riders barrel race at rodeos. Equestrians also compete at such prestigious events as the National Horse Show, held annually at Madison Square Garden in New York since 1883. Members of the United States Equestrian Team participate in international equestrian sporting events including the Olympics.

Legislation and Statistics

The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was organized in 1866 to protest horse abuse. During the late nineteenth century, George T. Angell established similar humane groups in Massachusetts to protect horses. Congress passed the Horse Protection Act (HPA) in 1970, then amended it in 1976 with further revisions in 1983 to provide legal measures to prevent abusive treatment of horses. Specifically, the HPA forbids people from soring horses. This procedure involves application of stimulants, such as chemical pastes or sharp chains, to make a horse step higher or perform more spectacularly than normal in order to win competitions or earn higher prices at sales. After receiving training and being licensed by a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)–approved horse agency, a Designated Qualified Person (DQP) monitors horses at shows and auctions to inspect, detect, and bar any animals that have been sored.

The HPA declares that soring of horses for exhibitions or sales as well as the interstate transportation of sored animals to horse shows is prohibited. People convicted of soring horses are usually prevented from participating in future shows and sales for a specific time period, occasionally being disqualified for life, fined as much as $5,000, and sometimes sentenced to as much as a two-year prison term. State and local governments often prosecute people for committing acts that violate regional animal welfare legislation.

In 1996, the American Horse Council Foundation, created in 1969, commissioned a study to evaluate how the horse industry impacts the U.S. economy. The study determined that the American horse industry contributes annually $25.3 billion of goods and services to the national economy and pays taxes totaling $1.9 billion. The horse industry provides more income to the gross domestic product than such significant industries as furniture and tobacco manufacturing, motion picture production, and railroad transportation.

Throughout the United States, breeding, training, and boarding stables, horse show arenas, racetracks, and auction barns hire workers for various tasks, ranging from grooms and stable hands to jockeys and stable managers. At least 7.1 million people participate in some aspect of the horse industry. More Americans are employed by the horse industry than work in media broadcasting, railroad, or tobacco, coal, and petroleum manufacturing positions. Millions more are active as spectators at equine events.

Bibliography

American Horse Council Home page at: http://www.horsecouncil.org/

American Quarter Horse Association. Home page at http://www.aqha.com.

Appaloosa Horse Club. Home page at http://www.appaloosa.com.

Kentucky Horse Park and the International Museum of the Horse. Home page at http://www.imh.org.

Tennessee Walking Horse Breeders' and Exhibitors' Association. Home page at http://www.twhbea.com.

Cypher, John. Bob Kleberg and the King Ranch: A Worldwide Sea of Grass. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995.

Denhardt, Robert M. The Quarter Running Horse: America's Oldest Breed. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1979.

Edwards, Elwyn Hartley. The Encyclopedia of the Horse. Photography by Bob Langrish and Kit Houghton. Foreword by Sharon Ralls Lemon. London and New York: Dorling Kindersley, 1994.

Gray, Bob. Great Horses of the Past. Houston: Cordovan Corp., 1967.

Hillenbrand, Laura. Seabiscuit: An American Legend. New York: Random House, 2001.

Horse Industry Directory. Washington, D.C.: Published annually by the American Horse Council in cooperation with American Horse Publications, 1976–.

Mellin, Jeanne. The Complete Morgan Horse. Lexington, Mass.: S. Greene Press, 1986.

Ward, Kathleen Rauschl. The American Horse: From Conquistadors to the 21st Century. Belleville, Mich.: Maple Yard Publications, 1991.

Zeh, Lucy. Etched in Stone: Thoroughbred Memorials. Lexington, Ky.: Blood-Horse, 2000.

For the last five thousand years, the horse has of been of greater human interest for its strength than as a source of meat. The domestication of the horse is considered to have taken place in the present-day Ukraine in the fourth millennium B.C.E., and the practice spread from there. Prior to that, wild horses had been caught for food and seem to have been eaten by most peoples that adopted them during the first three thousand years of their domestication, though other, work-oriented kinds of use were more important.

The people of ancient Greece and Rome despised horse eating, although it was still practiced among the Germanic peoples and Asian nomads at that time. The Asian nomads also made a common use of mare's milk and "koumiss"; in fact, fermented mare's milk has been an important foodstuff in the steppes of Central Asia and is still a common drink there, and is also known in Scandinavia and the former Soviet Republics. Boeuf tartar is believed to originate from Asian Nomads, who preferred horsemeat to beef and therefore many think that this dish was originally made from horsemeat. Horsemeat is still an important food in Mongolia and Japan. The Japanese like to use it in their famous teriyaki. Horses are bred for food in many places in Asia, as in Mongolia, Central Asia, and Japan.

The dietary restrictions of Jews, Muslims, and most Hindus do not allow horsemeat in the diet. The practice of sacrificing horses and in some cases consuming their meat has been widespread in Europe and South Asia from the beginning of their domestication. It was part of pagan Germanic ceremonies and its importance in pagan religion is probably the reason why it was despised by Christians. Horsemeat is the only foodstuff that Christianity has abolished from the diet for religious reasons. Canon law forbade the eating of horses, and most of the Christian societies in Europe adopted that ban. This ban was for the most part abolished in first half of the nineteenth century in the Christian countries of Europe. Now horsemeat is eaten in most of the European countries, and in France, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, and Iceland horses are bred for food production, although horse has not yet become a considerable part of the diet in any of these countries. The French and Flemish consume the most horsemeat in Europe, but the highest rate of consumption has amounted to only about five percent of that of beef. In the last decades of twentieth century the consumption of horsemeat dropped. One reason was that meat was cheaper when it was a byproduct of raising horses for uses that machines have mostly taken over now. Another reason is the increased opposition to eating horsemeat by animal rights activists. Activists in the United Kingdom have fought against eating horsemeat for decades, and in America the campaign against horse slaughtering for food is also prominent. Some American Indians are traditionally horse eaters, but the average consumption in the United States is low, although horsemeat is readily available. French immigrants make up a considerable part of the horse eaters. In many places in the Americas, as in the United States (the leading producer of horsemeat), Argentina, and Canada, horses are bred for their meat but it is mostly exported.

Horsemeat is darker red than beef and venison. Raw horsemeat is also more fibrous, and if kept for a while, it becomes rapidly black in color. It is more than 50 percent lower in fat and energy than beef, but of comparable nutritional value. After slaughter, foals and horses up to about two years old are usually chopped and prepared in ways similar to cattle and served as various kinds of steaks and goulashes, although special recipes for horsemeat are rare in the cookbooks of the Western world. The meat is easy to digest and the taste generally falls somewhere between beef and venison but a bit sweeter than either. Meat of older horses is commonly salted, smoked, or made into sausages. It can be very difficult to distinguish foal meat and beef, if it is spiced the right way. Hence in many places measures have been taken to prevent selling of horsemeat as beef. Older horses tend to be fatter, and horsefat is yellowish in color and not considered good in taste. The horsefat gets quickly rancid if not properly conserved, and horsemeat deteriorates more rapidly than beef. The fat, when melted, becomes oillike, and has been used for bread baking in northern Europe.

Bibliography

Buell, Paul D., and Eugene Anderson, eds. A Soup for the Quan:Chinese Dietary Medicine of the Mongol Era as Seen in Hu Szu-Hus Yishan cheng-yao: Introduction, Translation, Commentary and Chinese Text. London: Kegan Paul International, 2000.

Kiple, Kenneth F., and Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas, eds. TheCambridge World History of Food. Volume I. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge Unversity Press, 2000.

Milk and Milk Products from Medieval to Modern Times. Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Ethnological Food Research. Ireland, 1992; edited by Patricia Lysaght. Edinburgh: Canongate in association with the Department of Irish Folklore, University College Dublin, 1994.

Rögnvaldardóttir, Nanna. Matarást [An Icelandic encyclopedia on food and cooking]. Reykjavík, 1998.

Schwabe, Calvin W. Unmentionable Cuisine. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1979.

—Hallgerdur Gísladóttir

The behavior of a mare which is displaying estrus.

Tutor's tip: The "hoarse" (rough or weakened voice) "horse" (a four legged animal you ride on) didn't mind the "hoars" (frosts). Note: "Whores" are people who behave like prostitutes.

Quotes:

"Go anywhere in England where there are natural, wholesome, contented, and really nice English people; and what do you always find? That the stables are the real center of the household." - George Bernard Shaw

"I've often said there's nothing better for the inside of a man than the outside of a horse." - Ronald Reagan

"My beautiful, my beautiful! That standest meekly by, with thy proudly-arched and glossy neck, and dark and fiery eye!" - Caroline Sheridan Norton

"I can make a General in five minutes but a good horse is hard to replace." - Abraham Lincoln

"It takes a good deal of physical courage to ride a horse. This, however, I have. I get it at about forty cents a flask, and take it as required." - Stephen B. Leacock

"The horse, the horse! The symbol of surging potency and power of movement, of action, in man." - D. H. Lawrence

See more famous quotes about Horses