PASTERN

Pastern

The pastern is a part of the leg of a horse between the fetlock and the top of the hoof. It incorporates the long pastern bone and the short pastern bone, which are held together by two sets of paired ligaments to form the pastern joint . Anatomically homologous to the two largest bones found in the human finger, the pastern was famously mis-defined by Samuel Johnson in his dictionary as "the knee of a horse". When a lady asked Johnson how he came to do so, he gave the much-quoted reply: "Ignorance, madam, pure ignorance."

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pastern

Noun

  1. The area on a horse's leg between the fetlock joint and the hoof.
  2. A shackle for horses while pasturing.
  3. A patten.


The above text is a snippet from Wiktionary: pastern
and as such is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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