three-year-old horse
- noun
- Jargon
:
caballo de tres años
- She owns a three-year-old horse that has great potential.
Examples
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This year's Derby features a promising three-year-old horse with an impressive record.
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The three-year-old horse won the race!
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The trainer specializes in preparing three-year-old horses for top-level races.
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Winning as a three-year-old horse is often a sign of future success on the track.
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The trainer specializes in preparing three-year-old horses for top-level races.
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This year's Derby features a promising three-year-old horse with an impressive record.
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Winning as a three-year-old horse is often a sign of future success on the track.
Synonyms
45
1.3
A person, animal, or thing that is three years old
12
3.9
A horse that is three years old and races in that age group
How Old
Surface Forms
Morphology
three-year-old + horse
The meaning is directly compositional: an adjectival age-phrase ('three-year-old') modifies 'horse' to indicate a horse aged three years. This standard morphological pattern for expressing age is cross-linguistically common and therefore immediately understandable to a B1 learner who knows the constituent words.
Etymology
Three-year-old horse is a simple name for a three-year-old horse, meaning a horse that is 'three years old'. In horse racing, many important races are only for horses of this age, so the phrase often refers to a young racehorse at an important stage in its career.