Word.ws English Dictionary

piaffe

piaffe noun: a calm, composed, elevated trot in place.

Noun

piaffe (plural piaffes)

  1. A calm, composed, elevated trot in place.

Verb

piaffe (third-person singular simple present piaffes, present participle piaffing, simple past and past participle piaffed)

  1. (archaic, rare) To strut pretentiously, to parade about.
    • Which loue you must know was ingendered in the sweet soile of Fraunce, where I piaffed like a bon companion, with a steele at my girdle, till the Friars (a canker of the curssed Covent) fell to drawing of naked knives, and kild indeed the good kind Henrie of Fraunce, the more was the pittie.1593, John Eliot, Ortho-epia Gallica: Eliots fruits for the French, Scolar P., published 1968, page A3
  2. To trot a horse with a high, slow, step, lifting the feet but without moving forward significantly.
    • To piaffe in backing is rather too much to be expected in the hurry which [etc.].1761 (1778), James A. H. Murray, editor, A new English dictionary on historical principles: founded mainly on the materials collected by the Philological Society, Volume 7, Part 2, Oxford: Clarendon...
  3. To ride a horse in this way.
    • Accordingly he piaffed away in high spirits and confidence to the head of Fergus's regiment, although understanding not a word of Gaelic, and very little English.1814, Sir Walter Scott, edited by Peter Garside, Waverley, volume 1 of Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels, Edinburgh University Press, published 2008, page 289

Forms of piaffe

Noun
pluralpiaffes
Verb
third-person singular presentpiaffes
present participlepiaffing
past participlepiaffed
pastpiaffed

Origin of piaffe

From French.

Questions about piaffe

What does piaffe mean?
Piaffe means a calm, composed, elevated trot in place.
What part of speech is piaffe?
Piaffe can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of piaffe?
The plural of piaffe is piaffes.

Words near piaffe in the dictionary

  1. piaculum
  2. piadina
  3. piadinas
  4. piadine
  5. Piaf
  6. piaffe
  7. piaffed
  8. piaffer
  9. piaffers
  10. piaffes
  11. piaffing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: piaffe (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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