FromMiddle Englishpastron,pastroun,pasturne, fromOld Frenchpasturon, diminutive ofpasture(“shackle for a horse in pasture”), fromVulgar Latinpastōriā.
pastern (pluralpasterns)
- The part of ahorse'sleg between thefetlockjoint and thehoof.
- 1918, Leo Tolstoy,Anna Karenina, translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude (Oxford 1998), page 158:
- 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 itspasterns.
1928,Siegfried Sassoon,Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, Penguin, published2013, page227:Below me, somewhere in the horse-lines, stood Cockbird, picketed to a peg in the ground by a rope which was already giving him a sorepastern.
- (obsolete) Ashackle for horses whilepasturing.[1]
- (obsolete) Apatten.
1697,Virgil, “The Third Book of theGeorgics”, inJohn Dryden, transl.,The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […],→OCLC:Upright he walks, onpasterns firm and straight;
His motions easy; prancing in his gait
So straight she walk'd, and on herpasterns high.
- panters,trepans,pantser,Panters,parents,entraps,Partens,pretans,arpents,persant,Napster
