Pastern
noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 The part of a horse's leg between the fetlock joint and the hoof.
"It was quite impossible to ride over the deeply-ploughed field; the earth bore only where there was still a little ice, in the thawed furrows the horse's legs sank in above its pasterns."
- 2 the part between the fetlock and the hoof wordnet
- 3 A shackle for horses while pasturing. obsolete
- 4 A patten. obsolete
"Upright he walks, on pasterns firm and straight; His motions easy; prancing in his gait So straight she walk'd, and on her pasterns high."
Example
More examples"It was quite impossible to ride over the deeply-ploughed field; the earth bore only where there was still a little ice, in the thawed furrows the horse's legs sank in above its pasterns."
Etymology
From Middle English pastron, pastroun, pasturne, from Old French pasturon, diminutive of pasture (“shackle for a horse in pasture”), from Vulgar Latin pastōriā.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.