Saddle

How to spell saddle

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce saddle

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does saddle mean?

1. nounA seat fastened to the back of a horse for a rider, or the seat on a bicycle or motorcycle.
2. verbTo put a saddle on an animal, or to burden someone with a responsibility or debt.

Saddle in a sentence

• noun

  She tightened the girth before lifting the saddle onto the horse.

• verb

  The new policy will saddle small firms with extra paperwork.

• noun

  The bicycle saddle was too low, so he raised it a few centimetres.

• verb

  He had to saddle the pony before the morning trek.

Where does saddle come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Saddle descends from the Old English word sadol, the name for the leather seat strapped to a horse's back. It belongs to a wide Germanic family that includes the modern German Sattel and the Dutch zadel, all of them traced to a reconstructed Proto-Germanic form sadulaz. Many scholars connect that ancestor to the very old Indo-European root sed-, meaning 'to sit', which makes good sense for an object you sit on, and which links saddle distantly to words like 'sit' and 'seat'. The spelling settled with the doubled d and the quiet -le ending that English often uses for everyday tools and objects, such as 'ladle' and 'cradle'. By the Middle Ages the word had also become a verb, first for the literal act of putting a saddle on an animal and later for the figurative sense of loading someone with a burden or responsibility.

How the word is built

• sadol (Old English: seat for a rider)
• -le (noun ending from the older instrumental form)