Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
quarter horse

quarter horse

4 3.7
A small, strong American horse bred for short, fast races like quarter-mile sprints
  • noun
  • /ˈkwɔrtər hɔrs/
  • US
translation icon : caballo cuartero
  • The quarter horse is known for its speed and agility in short-distance competitions.
  • chestnut quarter horse
  • quarter horse ranch
  • American quarter horse

Examples

  • Though we started with thoroughbreds, we now breed, raise, and train quarter horses.

    Fiction book (1996)

  • I saw the quarter horse, not in the third stall but in the very last stall over.

    Fiction book (1994)

  • - You know what a Quarter Horse is?

    Lean on Pete (2018)

  • I'll take those two quarter horses of yours.

    Fiction book (1990)

  • Quarter Horse is a breed.

    Lean on Pete (2018)

  • It's a wonderful quarter horse, a chestnut mare.

    Fiction book (1995)

  • Later, after we'd lived in New Mexico for a while, we decided to raise quarter horses, then Arabs.

    Fiction book (1998)

  • Bronty was a big ten-year-old quarter horse, a reddish bay.

    Fiction book (1995)

  • Six-year-old chestnut Quarter Horse mare, nice mover, reliable.

    Fiction book (1993)

  • Most contemporary charros prefer quarter horses because they are well-boned and muscular, with the easy disposition and necessary speed, agility, and responsiveness for roping and other charreada events.

    Academic text (1994)

Synonyms

horse
vsquarter horse
∞ 1.0

A large four-legged animal kept by people for riding, work, or racing

is a small muscular breed bred for short sprint races

Surface Forms

quarter horse singular
quarter horses plural

Morphology

quarter + horse

The compound is partly compositional: 'quarter' + 'horse' signals a type of horse and could suggest a relation to a 'quarter' measure (e.g. quarter-mile), so a learner may guess it is a particular kind of horse. However, the specific sense — a named breed historically bred for short (quarter-mile) sprints and certain connotations of size/musculature — is specialized cultural knowledge not directly predictable from the basic meanings, so full understanding at B1 is unlikely without exposure.

Etymology

Quarter horse gets its name from early American races run over a 'quarter mile'. Riders and farmers chose horses that could run very fast for that short distance, so the strong, quick quarter horse came to mean the breed used for short sprints and for work on ranches.