towel horse
- noun
- UK
:
tendedero de toallas
- She put the wet bathroom towels on the towel horse to dry.
Examples
-
The antique wooden towel horse stood next to the bathtub.
-
We bought a new towel horse for the guest bathroom.
-
Please hang your hand towel on the towel horse after use.
-
The towel horse in the bathroom is very useful.
-
Please hang your hand towel on the towel horse after use.
-
She put the wet bathroom towels on the towel horse to dry.
-
The antique wooden towel horse stood next to the bathtub.
Synonyms
4
1.6
A bar or frame for hanging towels to dry in a bathroom
2
2.3
A bar fixed to a wall for hanging towels
A bar fixed to a wall for hanging towels to dry
A frame for hanging wet clothes to dry indoors
A frame for hanging clothes to dry or to display them
How Many
- UK
4
1.6
- UK
- US
2
2.3
1
1.9
192
1.0
Surface Forms
Morphology
towel + horse
The element 'towel' clearly signals the item involved, but 'horse' here is a metaphorical extension meaning a frame or rack (as in 'clothes horse'), which is not the primary, literal sense a B1 learner would know. Because the support/rack sense is lexicalized in certain compounds but not transparently predictable from the animal sense alone, a learner who knows the constituent words may only partially infer the meaning.
Etymology
Towel horse may come from old wooden stands called horses that looked like a horse's back. People would hang a towel over the bars like a saddle, so towel horse came to mean 'a rack for hanging towels'.