Horseback

How to spell horseback

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce horseback

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does horseback mean?

1. nounThe back of a horse, considered as the place a rider sits, especially in the phrase 'on horseback'.

Horseback in a sentence

• The rangers patrol the remote trails on horseback.

• We toured the vineyard on horseback rather than by car.

Where does horseback come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English compound, formed straightforwardly from two Old English words: hors, the ancestor of modern 'horse', and bæc, meaning the upper or rear part of the body, which gives us 'back'. Both elements are solidly Germanic and have close cousins across the older Germanic languages, where similar words for horse and for the spine or rear of a creature occur. The pairing literally names the part of the animal a rider sits upon, and from the late medieval period it was used in phrases describing travel and riding, especially the enduring expression 'on horseback'. Because the word is built from two everyday parts that are each spelled exactly as they sound, the only mild trap is remembering that it is written as a single unbroken word rather than as two words or a hyphenated pair.

How the word is built

• horse (the animal)
• back (the upper body of the animal, where a rider sits)