long horse
- noun
- Archaic
:
caballo de salto
- The gymnast sprinted toward the long horse and performed a flawless handspring vault.
Examples
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Modern competitions rarely use the long horse, having replaced it with a safer vaulting table.
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Coaches ensure that the long horse is stable before any athlete attempts a jump.
-
The gymnast practiced on the long horse every day.
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Can you show me how to use the long horse?
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The gymnast sprinted toward the long horse and performed a flawless handspring vault.
-
Coaches ensure that the long horse is stable before any athlete attempts a jump.
-
Modern competitions rarely use the long horse, having replaced it with a safer vaulting table.
Synonyms
1
8.9
A long gymnastic horse used for vaulting exercises
1
6.9
A long, solid piece of gymnastics equipment without handles that gymnasts run to and jump over
Surface Forms
Morphology
long + horse
The compound literally reads as 'long' + 'horse', so the adjective signals an elongated form, but here 'horse' denotes a specialized gymnastic apparatus rather than the animal. This domain-specific sense is not predictable for an average B1 learner who only knows the basic words, though the adjective-noun composition gives a partial clue, so it is partially transparent.
Etymology
Long horse comes from the gymnastics equipment's look: it is a padded, stretched form that looks like a horse and is much longer than the old training 'horse', so gymnasts run and jump along its length. That's why long horse means the long gymnastics 'horse' used for vaulting.