Word.ws English Dictionary

pastern

/ˈpæstən/US/ˈpæstəɹn/

pastern noun: the part of a horse's leg between the fetlock joint and the hoof.

Noun

pastern (plural pasterns)

  1. The part of a horse's leg between the fetlock joint and the hoof.
    • 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 its pasterns.1918, Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude (Oxford 1998), page 158
    • 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 sore pastern.1928, Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, Penguin, published 2013, page 227
  2. (obsolete) A shackle for horses while pasturing.
  3. (obsolete) A patten.
    • Upright he walks, on pasterns firm and straight;
      His motions easy; prancing in his gait
      So straight she walk'd, and on her pasterns high.1697, Virgil, “The Third Book of the Georgics”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC

pastern meaning in Tamil

pastern in Tamil

குளம்புமூட்டு

Forms of pastern

pluralpasterns

Origin of pastern

From Middle English pastron, pastroun, pasturne, from Old French pasturon, diminutive of pasture (“shackle for a horse in pasture”), alteration of Late Latin pastōria after the suffix -ure.

Questions about pastern

What does pastern mean?
Pastern means the part of a horse's leg between the fetlock joint and the hoof.
What is pastern in Tamil?
Pastern in Tamil is குளம்புமூட்டு. See Pastern meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is pastern?
Pastern is a noun.
How do you pronounce pastern?
Pastern is pronounced /ˈpæstən/ (UK).
What is the plural of pastern?
The plural of pastern is pasterns.

Words near pastern in the dictionary

  1. pastels
  2. pastepot
  3. pastepots
  4. paster
  5. Pasterka
  6. pastern
  7. Pasternack
  8. Pasternacks
  9. Pasternak
  10. Pasternakian
  11. Pasternaks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pastern (page history and authors); pastern (Tamil Wiktionary) (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-pastern.wav.

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