spavined

spavined

English

Etymology

spavin +‎ -ed

Adjective

spavined (comparative more spavined, superlative most spavined)

1. Having spavin (said of a horse).
   • 1868, Mrs. H. Lloyd Evans, “Across the Atlas”, in Last Winter in Algeria, London: Chapman & Hall, […], OCLC 25944134, page 100:

     As for the wonderful feats of horsemanship one hears of or sees among the Arabs, they are due to sharp spurs like razors, and to bits strong enough to break an animal's jaw. [...] Their favourite feat at their fantasias or fêtes of suddenly pulling up their horses short while at hand-gallop, ruins their legs, and there is in consequence scarcely a horse to be seen whose hind-legs are not spavined.

   • 2010, Stephen Donaldson, Against All Things Ending: The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Hachette UK, →ISBN:

     He was mounted on a mangy, shovel-headed horse so spavined that it should have been unable to support his improbable bulk.

2. Old, worn out, obsolete (said figuratively of a person).

   I’m a spavined old warrior, and I don’t have much time left in this world, but I still have a few tricks to teach these whippersnappers.

   • 1822, Lord Byron, The Vision of Judgement, stanzas 90–91:

     Now the Bard, glad to get an audience, […]
     stuck fast with his first Hexameter,
     Not one of all whose gouty feet would stir.
     But ere the spavined Dactyls could be spurred
     Into recitative, in great dismay
     Both Cherubim & Seraphim were heard
     To murmur loudly through their long array […]

   • 1937, P. G. Wodehouse, Lord Emsworth and Others, Overlook, Woodstock: 2002, p 95.

     The cry, in certain of its essentials not unlike the wail of a soul in torment, rolled out over the valley, and the young man on the seventh tee, from whose lips it had proceeded, observing that the little troupe of spavined octogenarians doddering along the fairway paid no attention whatever, gave his driver a twitch as if he was about to substitute action for words.

See also

• crippled
• lame