Word.ws English Dictionary

horsy

/ˈhɔːsi/US/ˈhɔɹsi/

horsy adjective: of, relating to, or similar to horses.

Adjective

horsy (comparative horsier, superlative horsiest)

  1. Of, relating to, or similar to horses.
    • All the horses had been seized and sent to the front, but the whole place still smelt of horse-piss and rotten oats. I was at the barracks about a week. Chiefly I remember the horsy smells, the quavering bugle-calls […]1938 April, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter I, in Homage to Catalonia, London: Secker & Warburg, →OCLC
    • Pirates, these women, with their ladylike briefcases for the loot and their horsy, acquisitive teeth.1985, Margaret Atwood, “Soul Scrolls”, in The Handmaid’s Tale, Toronto, Ont.: McClelland and Stewart, →ISBN, page 165
    Antonyms:
    unhorsy
  2. Involved in breeding or riding horses.
    Antonyms:
    unhorsy
  3. Clumsy, clunky, bulky, inelegant, or unrefined.
    • Near-synonym: crude
    Synonyms:
    crude
    Antonyms:
    unhorsy

Noun

horsy (plural horsies)

  1. (childish, endearing) A child's term or name for a horse.
  2. A game where a child rides on the back of another, who is on all fours.
    • When he got in the house, if I'd left him to read his newspaper in quiet, then he'd play horsey with me, riding me around the house on his back; I'd put a pillow on his back for my saddle2000, Anique Devoe, I'm Ready
    • When you get down on the floor and play “horsey”, you are giving yourself a heck of a workout – and it is fun for the kids!2003, Bill Phillips, Eating for Life: Your Guide to Great Health, Fat Loss and Increased Energy

Synonyms of horsy

Antonyms

Forms of horsy

Adjective
comparativehorsier
superlativehorsiest
alternative formhorsey
alternative formhorsie
Noun
pluralhorsies

Origin of horsy

From horse + -y. Cognate with Middle Low German rössich (“horselike, equipped with a horse”).

Words formed from horsy

Words that rhyme with horsy

Questions about horsy

What does horsy mean?
Horsy means of, relating to, or similar to horses.
What part of speech is horsy?
Horsy can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce horsy?
Horsy is pronounced /ˈhɔːsi/ (UK).

Words near horsy in the dictionary

  1. Horstmann
  2. Horstmanns
  3. Horstmans
  4. horsts
  5. Horswell
  6. horsy
  7. hort.
  8. Horta
  9. hortation
  10. hortations
  11. hortative

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: horsy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-horsy.wav.

Cite this entry: “horsy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/horsy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.