Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Something used as a toy horse, such as the knee of an adult or a rocking horse.
- n. A horse added to a team of horses to assist a wagon through high water or over difficult terrain.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A child's rocking-horse or hobby-horse: commonly used in the adverbial phrase on cockhorse, a-cockhorse, on horseback, or as if on horseback (as when a child rides on a broomstick); hence, in an elevated position; elated; on the high horse.
- Mounted as on a hobby-horse, or as if on horseback.
- Proud; upstart.
- Astride.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A child's rocking-horse.
- n. A high or tall horse.
- adj. Lifted up, as one is on a tall horse.
- adj. Lofty in feeling; exultant; proud; upstart.
WordNet 3.0
- n. anything used as a toy horse (such as a rocking horse or one knee of an adult)
Etymologies
- Origin unknown.
Examples
“Xenophon, in his Sympos. brings in Socrates as a principal actor, no man merrier than himself, and sometimes he would [3516] ride a cockhorse with his children. — equitare in arundine longa.”
“I take Heaven to witness, after all my jesting, my heart is innocent, and the sports of my pen just like those of my infancy when I rode cockhorse on a stick.”
“_ (He horserides cockhorse, leaping in the saddle) _ The lady goes a pace a pace and the coachman goes a trot a trot and the gentleman goes a gallop a gallop a gallop a gallop.”
“That conqueror of circumstances will, the dullest soul may begin predicting, return on his cockhorse to favour and authority.”
“But "the shadow of an old hat and a cockhorse": what does that mean?”
“Republican: but really in this country Republicans are fighting with the shadow of an old hat and a cockhorse.”
“He may be a bit of a Republican: but really in this country Republicans are fighting with the shadow of an old hat and a cockhorse.”
“He asked if I should like to ride a-cockhorse there with him.”
“Francis Baily, Esq. "P.S. Mr. Flamsteed has come in, and says he left S.r Isaac riding cockhorse upon the nebula, and poring over it as if it were a book.”
“And so being shut out from Lathom, thou be'st a cockhorse for”
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