saddle
Pluralsaddles
Verbsaddles, saddling, saddled
Pluralsaddles
Formssaddles, saddling, saddled
- 1A rider's seat, typically leather and raised at the front and back, fastened on the back of a horse or other animal by a strap around its body.
The rider was thrown from the saddle when her horse stumbled at the fence.
A badly fitted saddle can rub a horse's back raw on a long ride.
Note
The word is Old English sadol, and its deeper origin is uncertain; one proposal links it to the root meaning "to sit", which would make a saddle simply a thing to sit on. Nearly every other use of the word borrows this one's shape, from a dip between hills to a cut of meat and a part of a guitar.
- 2The fixed seat on which the rider of a bicycle, motorbike, or similar vehicle sits.
Cyclists who ride long distances often pay extra for a well-padded saddle.
He swung off the motorcycle's saddle and pulled off his helmet.
Similarseat
- 3To put a saddle on a horse or other animal.
The stable hand saddled the mare and led her out to the ring.
Guides saddle the mules at dawn so the group can start up the canyon early.
Note
The verb is nearly as old as the noun: Old English already had sadolian, made from it. Coverdale's Bible of 1535 has Balaam rise in the morning and saddle his ass, and a Spanish proverb in Minsheu's Spanish-English dictionary says the bay horse thinks one thing and the man who saddles him another.
- 4To burden or weigh someone down with a problem or responsibility.
Lawmakers warned that the plan would saddle young workers with decades of debt.
The new manager found herself saddled with a project already months behind schedule.
Similarburden, encumber, load, lumber
Oppositerelieve
Note
Most of the time it is passive, with the person carrying the load as subject: saddled with the task, saddled with house payments. With introduces the load, and the load is almost always unwanted; H. G. Wells's bishop wishes he had not been saddled with Whippham's rather futile son as his chaplain.
- 5Something whose appearance or shape resembles a rider's seat strapped to a horse's back.
Erosion had carved the sandstone boulder into a smooth saddle, curved up at both ends.
Each chip is pressed into a shallow saddle so that the whole stack nests neatly in the can.
Note
The catch-all sense behind a family of specialist ones: what carries over from the rider's seat is its profile, raised in front and behind and dipped where the rider sits. Many of the word's technical meanings are this likeness pinned down: the low point between two hills, the geologist's saddle reef, the mathematician's saddle point. When the likeness needs saying outright, saddle-shaped and saddle-like do the job.
- 6A low point between two hills, where the ground dips in the shape of a saddle.
The trail crosses a windy saddle before dropping into the next valley.
From the saddle, the climbers could see both summits and the glacier below.
Note
William Dampier already uses it in 1697, of a high hill "with a Saddle or bending on the top". Because it is the lowest point on a ridge, it is where paths and railways cross: an account of the Bernese Oberland climbs to the saddle of the Kleine Scheidegg before the Grindelwald valley opens ahead, and John le Carré's climbers scramble over false peaks toward one.
- 7To place a burden or responsibility on someone, or to force a problem on them.
Executives tried to saddle the blame on a junior accountant.
The landlord saddled the cost of the repairs upon his tenants.
Note
Here the load becomes the object and the person comes after on or upon: you saddle a debt on someone rather than saddling someone with it, as in the with pattern. Walter Besant and James Rice use upon, of a woman eager to marry "anyone upon whom she could saddle her debts".
- 8Of a rider, to mount a horse and take one's seat on it.
The posse saddled up in the dark, swinging onto their horses without a word.
Riders who saddle up too fast sometimes slide right off the other side.
Similarmount
Oppositedismount
Note
North Americans often say saddle up for the rider's own move from the ground into the seat: the posse saddled up in the dark. The same phrase also covers getting the horses ready, so saddle up, let's ride may mean either, or both at once. Dante Gabriel Rossetti's translation of Bürger has the plain form: "we saddled not" till midnight.
- 9A cut of meat that takes in both loins together with part of the backbone.
The chef roasted a saddle of lamb whole and carved it at the table.
Saddle of rabbit, boned and stuffed, was the restaurant's signature dish.
Note
The cut is named for where it lies: across the animal's back, taking both loins in one piece, just where a rider's saddle would sit. It usually comes with of and the animal, saddle of mutton, lamb or rabbit, and Margaret Dods's The Cook and Housewife's Manual roasts it alongside the leg and the haunch.
- 10Horseback riding as an activity or an occupation.
After forty years in the saddle, the rancher sold his herd and moved to town.
Breeders train some horses for harness and others for the saddle.
Note
The phrase that carries it is for the saddle. Roger Ascham's horseman of 1545 knows how to choose a colt likely to prove excellent for the saddle, and Washington Irving's traveler takes two horses, one for the saddle and the other as a packhorse. Riding is set against carrying, and in the saddle still means at work as a rider.
- 11To place something on another thing the way a saddle sits on an animal.
The plumber saddled a clamp over the main pipe to tap in a new line.
Some warblers saddle their nests on a bare limb rather than in a fork.
Note
Naturalists use it for a nest built astride a branch: John James Audubon's grackle nest is "saddled on the bough", thinner in the middle and thicker at the two sides so that it grips, the way a saddle hangs over a horse's back.
- 12The piece on a guitar that the strings rest on; on an acoustic guitar it also carries their vibrations, by way of the bridge, to the soundboard.
A bone saddle can give an acoustic guitar a brighter, clearer tone.
The luthier lowered the saddle to bring the strings closer to the frets.
Note
How high the strings sit above the frets is largely the saddle's doing. On an acoustic guitar it is a thin strip, often of bone, set into a slot in the bridge, and a luthier lowers it to bring the strings down. Electric guitars usually give each string its own saddle, which slides back or forward to keep notes in tune higher up the neck.
- 13A device like a riding saddle, used to fasten loads of goods onto an animal; a packsaddle.
Each llama's saddle carried two sacks of supplies, one hanging on either side.
The traders strapped salt blocks to the camels' saddles before the caravan set out.
Similarpacksaddle
- 14A medium brown color like that of saddle leather; also called saddle brown.
The sofa is available in black, slate gray, and saddle.
She picked saddle for the car's leather seats because it hides dust.
- 15A band of leather, usually in a contrasting color, stitched across the top of a shoe over the instep.
The cobbler restitched the saddle where it had pulled away from the instep.
Two-tone oxfords with a navy saddle were part of the school uniform.
Note
The band crosses the instep the way a riding saddle crosses a horse's back, coming down on either side of the foot. Americans use the word, and the shoe built around the band takes the name too, as saddle shoes or simply saddles.
- 16A shoe like an oxford with a separate leather band across the instep, also called a saddle shoe or saddle oxford.
In the old yearbook photos, half the girls are wearing bobby socks and saddles.
The left saddle pinched, so she took the pair back to the store.
Note
Like most shoe names it usually comes in the plural: in Judy Blume's Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing (1972), the order is "brown-and-white saddles for Fudge". Because the band has the same name, the sentence has to show whether the whole shoe is meant or only the leather across its instep.
- 17A marking on an animal that is shaped like a saddle, such as the one on an adult harp seal's back or the many on a boa constrictor; also called a saddle patch.
Adult harp seals are easy to spot by the black saddle across their backs.
Researchers counted the saddles along each boa's body to tell the snakes apart.
Note
Field guides keep it distinct from a band. A saddle crosses the back and runs partway down both sides, stopping short of the belly; a marking that circles the whole body is a band or ring instead, and the difference helps separate similar snakes and fish. The harp seal's dark saddle is why it is also called the saddleback seal.
- 18A point on the graph of a smooth function such that every neighborhood of it contains points on both sides of its tangent plane; also called a saddle point.
At the origin, the surface z = x² − y² has a saddle, curving up along one axis and down along the other.
A critical point can be a maximum, a minimum, or a saddle.
Note
Picture a riding saddle: it rises toward the front and back and falls away to the sides, so its center is a low point along one line and a high point along another. In mathematics that center is a critical point that is neither a peak nor a pit, which is why a search for the lowest point can stall there.
- 19The lower back of a domestic fowl, especially a male, which carries the saddle feathers or saddle hackles.
Fly tiers prize the long, narrow feathers from a rooster's saddle.
At the poultry show, the judge checked each cockerel's saddle for broken feathers.
Note
Poultry breeders read the saddle to tell a rooster from a hen. On a male it carries long, pointed, glossy hackles that drape down the sides toward the tail; a hen's saddle feathers are shorter and rounded at the tip.
- 20
- 21A harness saddle: the part of a harness that carries the weight of the poles or shafts linking a vehicle to a horse or other animal.
A poorly padded saddle can rub sores where the shafts press down on a cart horse's back.
The driver tightened the girth under the saddle so the carriage shafts would not sway.
- 22An equipment part, such as a flange, that is hollowed to fit onto a convex surface and serves to attach or support something.
On the old locomotive, the smokebox rests on a cast-iron saddle above the cylinders.
Each pipe saddle is shaped to the curve of the pipe and clamped tight with U-bolts.
Note
Steam locomotives give the clearest case: the saddle carries the round smokebox on the frames and was often cast in one piece with the cylinders, though the modified Great Western Hall class described in Railway Magazine in 1944 cast them separately. In plumbing, a saddle clamped onto a main lets a branch be tapped in without cutting the pipe.
- 23To cut a saddle-shaped notch in a log or piece of wood so it fits with others; also, to join logs or timbers with notches of that shape.
Builders saddle the ends of each log so the corners lock together without nails.
The crew saddled the cedar logs at every corner, scribing each notch to fit the log beneath.
Similarnotch
Note
The saddle notch is a log builder's joint for cabin corners: each log is hollowed underneath to sit over the one crossing below it. It is among the simplest notches to cut, and it leaves the ends jutting past the corner, where a dovetail corner would finish flush.
- 24The threshold of a door: the raised board or strip across the floor at the bottom of a doorway.
Rain had warped the old saddle, so the contractor pried it out and screwed in a new one.
A marble saddle marks the line where the bathroom tile meets the hallway floor.
Note
Builders separate it from the sill beneath it on an outside door. The sill forms the bottom of the frame and turns rain and dirt away from the house; the saddle sits on top, where the door closes against it, and it can be unscrewed, pried out and replaced on its own.
- 25To control or restrain someone or something, as though putting a saddle on them.
But he never would believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden.
1849, Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James IINote
The figure is a person treated as a horse, made ready to be mounted and steered. Macaulay's History of England turns it into politics, with a man who would never believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world booted and spurred to ride, and millions saddled and bridled to be ridden. Today rein in or harness does the work without the antique ring.
- 26A small piece, traditionally of ebony, at the bottom of a violin, viola, cello, or similar instrument, below the tailpiece, on which the tailpiece's securing cord rests.
- 27A padded cushion that serves as a seat in a cart or other vehicle.
- 28A time slot between two popular programs, in which another program is scheduled so that their viewers will watch it too.
- 29The base of a denture in which the artificial teeth are set.
- 30An anticline, a fold in which the rock layers slope down on each side; more narrowly, a low point along the axis of an anticline.
- 31In geology, a vein of ore curved like an arch, often gold-bearing quartz, lying along the crest of a fold in the rock.
- 32On a ship, a wooden chock hollowed on its upper and lower faces, fixed to one spar so another spar's end can rest in it.
- 33The thick, swollen band around an earthworm's body that forms the case for its eggs.
Showing meanings only.
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Origins
From Middle English sadel, from Old English sadol, from Proto-Germanic *sadulaz, “saddle.” Its further origin is uncertain: perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *sed-, “to sit,” though this has formal difficulties. Compare German Sattel and Dutch zadel.
From Middle English sadelen, “to put a saddle on (an animal),” from Old English sadolian, from Proto-Germanic *sadulōną, a verb formed from *sadulaz, “a saddle.” Compare German satteln and Swedish sadla.