Horseshoe

How to spell horseshoe

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce horseshoe

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does horseshoe mean?

1. nounA U-shaped metal plate nailed to a horse's hoof to protect it.
2. nounA U-shaped metal piece thrown at a stake in a lawn or pit game of the same name.

Horseshoe in a sentence

• The farrier shaped a new horseshoe over the forge.

• He tossed the horseshoe and it landed snugly around the stake.

• A rusty horseshoe hung above the stable door for luck.

• Each player gets to pitch one horseshoe per turn.

Where does horseshoe come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Horseshoe is a transparent compound of two very old native English words. 'Horse' descends from the Old English 'hors', a Germanic word for the animal that has cousins across the older Germanic languages. 'Shoe' comes from the Old English 'scoh', meaning a covering for the foot, again with relatives throughout the Germanic family. When farriers began nailing protective curved iron plates to horses' hooves, English simply joined the two words, and the compound is recorded from around the 14th century. The spelling trap lives entirely in the second half: 'shoe' keeps its unusual silent vowel cluster 'oe', so the word ends in '-shoe' rather than the '-shu' or '-shew' a writer might expect from the sound. Because both halves stayed close to their old forms, the modern spelling preserves that slightly surprising 'oe' ending.

How the word is built

• horse (the animal)
• shoe (foot covering)