Word.ws English Dictionary

pasterns

pasterns is the plural of pastern.

Meaning of pastern

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
  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

Questions about pasterns

What is pasterns the plural of?
Pasterns is the plural of pastern.

Words near pasterns in the dictionary

  1. Pasternacks
  2. Pasternak
  3. Pasternakian
  4. Pasternaks
  5. pasterned
  6. pasterns
  7. pasters
  8. Pasterska Góra
  9. pastes
  10. pastes up
  11. pastette

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pasterns (page history and authors); pastern (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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