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Glite Dictionary
horse latitude

horse latitude

1 9.9
An area with calm winds about 30 degrees north or south of the equator with little rain
  • noun
  • /hɔrs ˈlætɪˌtud/
  • Specialized
translation icon : latitud de los caballos
  • The sailors dreaded the horse latitude because it often meant days of waiting for a favorable wind to continue their journey.

Examples

  • You know how sometimes you get stuck in the horse latitudes?

    Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986)

  • We're in horse latitudes, calm water

    Escape Plan (2013)

  • While sailing through the calm waters, we found ourselves stuck in the horse latitude, where the winds barely blew.

  • In the horse latitude, the skies were clear, but the still air made progress impossible.

Surface Forms

horse latitude singular
horse latitudes plural

Morphology

horse + latitude

The compound 'horse latitude' is a specialized, historical meteorological term whose meaning ('regions of calm winds around 30°') is not compositionally derived from 'horse' + 'latitude'. The element 'horse' does not contribute a predictable semantic feature that would signal calm winds to a B1 learner, so the overall meaning is lexicalized and unpredictable without prior exposure.

Etymology

Horse latitude comes from one popular story about old sailing ships. When ships were stuck in an area of 'no wind', sailors sometimes threw horses into the sea to save water, so the name now means a place of 'little wind' and slow movement.