Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Afflicted with spavin.
  • adjective Marked by damage, deterioration, or ruin.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Affected with spavin; hence, figuratively, halting; crippled; very lame or limping.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Affected with spavin.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Having spavin (said of a horse).
  • adjective Old, worn out, obsolete (said figuratively of a person).

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective (of horses) afflicted with a swelling of the hock-joint

Etymologies

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Examples

  • There may seem to be a lot of men supporting you Iain but some of them will be Lib Dems are better referred to as spavined hermaphrodites not knowing which way to turn.

    The Male Dominated Blogosphere: Was Melissa Kite Right? 2007

  • There are two or three-other old war-horses - no more 'spavined' than you, I might add - former Bordermen like you, who have pretty much the same attitudes.

    Magic's Price Lackey, Mercedes 1990

  • There are two or three-other old war-horses - no more 'spavined' than you, I might add - former Bordermen like you, who have pretty much the same attitudes.

    Magic's Price Lackey, Mercedes 1990

  • But the hock may be "spavined," while to all outward observation it still retains its perfect form.

    Special Report on Diseases of the Horse Charles B. Michener 1877

  • If the owner of a "spavined" horse really succeeds in removing the lameness, he has accomplished all that he is justified in hoping for; beyond this let him be well persuaded that a "cure" is impossible.

    Special Report on Diseases of the Horse Charles B. Michener 1877

  • This past summer, a geezer friend of mine was railing at the current generation of hunters who roost in trees like so many spavined turkeys and rarely walk anywhere.

    Uncategorized Blog Posts 2009

  • What they want is a winged chariot pulled by Pegasus; what they have pushed through Congress is a rubbish cart pulled by a spavined donkey — but at winged-chariot prices.

    superversive: A digression superversive 2010

  • Not the spavined buffoons of the Wodehousian imagination, but the revenge-crazed thugs of the century following the Restoration.

    Unseen Swells: Why rock stars should become aristocrats 2010

  • Joe Biden: I had thought of him as merely one more spavined Senate hack.

    David E. 2008

  • Only you layer the Companions; top is a pair of glossy matched bays, under that is what any other mage will think is the reality, an illusion of a pair of nasty, old, spavined geldings.

    Widows and Orphans R. Daniel Lester 2010

Comments

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  • "'I came closer—creeping like a spavined snail, to be sure, for I was gromished from the fall and my right ankle gruppit—and was just about to call once more, when I heard sounds of a rare hochmagandy from inside the arbor.'

    "'Hochmagandy?' I glanced at Jamie, brows raised in question.

    "'Fornication,' he said tersely."

    —Diana Gabaldon, The Fiery Cross (NY: Bantam Dell, 2001), 1276–1277

    January 29, 2010

  • "Always be hot up in here," the woman said and she made a half-hearted gesture over her shoulder at the spavined house, but she wasn't looking back toward the house; her gaze had drifted down first to Almon, then inched its way over to Mickey.

    "Twins" by C.E. Morgan, in The New Yorker, June 14 & 21, 2010, page 124

    July 13, 2010