clothes horse
- noun
- /kloʊðz hɔrs/
- UK
:
tendedero
- She hung her wet laundry on the clothes horse to dry overnight.
Examples
-
A wooden clothes horse stood in the corner, displaying colorful scarves and hats.
-
The shop window featured a vintage clothes horse dressed in the latest fashion.
-
I bought a new clothes horse to dry my laundry.
-
The clothes horse in the living room is full of shirts.
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After washing the clothes, I hung them on the clothes horse to dry inside the house.
-
He set up a clothes horse in the living room to display his favorite outfits for guests.
-
To save space, she used a clothes horse instead of a traditional drying rack for her laundry.
Synonyms
5
1.0
A stand with hooks for hanging coats and hats
2
2.0
A stand with hooks for hanging coats and hats near the door
A frame for hanging wet clothes to dry indoors
A standing pole with hooks for hanging coats and hats
A tall stand with hooks for hanging coats and hats
How Big
Surface Forms
Morphology
clothes + horse
The literal constituents 'clothes' + 'horse' point to an animal or an object for holding clothes (and historically the term refers to a drying rack), so the figurative sense 'a person who is very interested in fashionable clothes' is a metaphorical extension rather than a transparent composition. This shift is unpredictable for an average B1 learner who knows the words but has not seen the idiom, and equivalent constructions are not universally paralleled across languages, making the expression opaque.
Etymology
Clothes horse was originally a wooden frame for hanging wet clothes to dry or for showing outfits; people called the frame a 'horse' because it 'carried' the clothes like an animal carries a load. So the name explains why it means 'a frame for drying or displaying clothes'.