packhorse

nounB2+Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #15,129 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: packhorses

A packhorse is an animal used to carry goods on its back. A packhorse bridge, lead the packhorse, packhorse trains.

Whole trade routes ran on them before roads were made up, and the narrow humpbacked packhorse bridges across northern England were built for exactly that traffic. A horse carries far less than a cart but goes where no cart can.

Definitions of packhorse

1nounpackhorseAn animal used to carry goods on its back.B2+
“The traders loaded salt and cloth onto packhorses for the long trip over the mountains.”

packhorse is a horse.

Where it comes from

Pack plus horse, from the packs strapped to the animal's back.

Middle English
palhors
English, today
packhorse

From pack + horse, possibly (from an uncertain date) via Middle English palhors (read pakhorse).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Horses & Riding

Practise this word

packhorse in the wild

The village is older than the now larger town of Newmarket and includes a 15th-century packhorse bridge spanning the River Kennett.
Moulton, Suffolk
A packhorse bridge is a bridge intended to carry packhorses (horses loaded with sidebags or panniers) across a river or stream.
Packhorse bridge
Before the road-building efforts of Napoleon, all crossings of the Alps were on packhorse trails.
Packhorse bridge
The village is set around a village green with a medieval cattle-pound and an old stone packhorse bridge across the beck.
Headlam
One of the village's main attractions is the much-photographed packhorse bridge.
Allerford

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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