stringhalt

American  

[string-hawlt] / ˈstrɪŋˌhɔlt /

noun

Veterinary Pathology.

1. a nerve disorder in horses, causing exaggerated flexing movements of the hind legs in walking.

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stringhalt British  

/ ˈstrɪŋˌhɔːlt /

noun

1. Also called: springhalt.  vet science a sudden spasmodic lifting of the hind leg of a horse, resulting from abnormal contraction of the flexor muscles of the hock

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Other Word Forms

• stringhalted adjective
• stringhaltedness noun
• stringhalty adjective

Etymology

Origin of stringhalt

First recorded in 1515–25; string + halt ²

Example Sentences

One summer he wandered through South Dakota selling farmers a home-remedy book with cures for lump jaw and scabies in cattle, stringhalt in horses.

From Time Magazine Archive

Melanotic tumors have been found in the brain and meninges in the form of small, black nodules in gray horses, and in one instance are believed to have induced the condition known as stringhalt.

From Special Report on Diseases of the Horse by Michener, Charles B.

NEAR-SIDE HORSE.—Well, haven’t I a splint and a corn, and ain’t one of my fore fetlocks got a formoses, and my hind legs the stringhalt?

From Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, July 17, 1841 by Various

This last circumstance, however, proves nothing; for the same thing may be said of tetanus in the human being, and of stringhalt in the horse; both of them being well-marked nervous affections.

From The Dog by Dinks

She had learned the symptoms of epizoötic—whatever that was—and poll-evil and stringhalt, and had gone from that to making a shopping tour through a Montgomery Ward catalogue.

From The Quirt by Fischer, Anton Otto