Other forms: saddles, saddled
A saddle is the seat a rider sits on. On a horse it is the shaped leather one strapped over a blanket; on a bicycle it is the narrow hard one you regret after an hour.
As a verb, to saddle a horse is to put the saddle on before you ride out. To saddle somebody WITH something is to hand them a burden they never asked for: I was saddled with the paperwork all summer. In the saddle means riding, or being the one in charge, and back in the saddle means returned to work after a break. Walkers use the word for the dip in a ridge between two peaks, and butchers use it for a cut of meat, as in saddle of lamb. On a bicycle only the seat is the saddle; the handlebars and frame are not part of it.
1nounsaddleA leather seat strapped to a horse's back for a rider.~92%
“She tightened the girth and swung up into the saddle.”
2nounbicycleThe seat on a bicycle or motorbike.~2%
“He raised the saddle two inches and the pain in his knees stopped.”
3verbputTo put a saddle on a horse.~2%
“Saddle the grey mare and take her round the field twice.”
4verbgiveTo give somebody an unwanted job, debt or responsibility.~2%
“The deal saddled the company with debts it could not pay.”
5nounlowA low dip along a mountain ridge between two higher points.~2%
“The path climbs to a saddle between the two peaks and then drops away.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 9 sentences found in the wild and placed 7 of them on a sense (2 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
saddle is a seat.
Saddle is Old English sadol, from Proto-Germanic sadulaz. After that the trail goes cold: it may come from a Proto-Indo-European form built on sed-, to sit, with an ending for a tool, but the Oxford English Dictionary is not convinced that the sounds work. A saddle may be a sitting-thing, or it may be older than anybody can prove.
Proto-Indo-European
*sed-
Proto-Indo-European
*sod-dʰlo-
Proto-Germanic
*sadulaz — saddle
Proto-West Germanic
*sadul
Old English
sadol
Middle English
sadel
English, today
saddle
Built from
From Middle English sadel, from Old English sadol, from Proto-West Germanic sadul, from Proto-Germanic sadulaz (“saddle”). Further etymology uncertain, perhaps from Proto-Indo-European sod-dʰlo-, from sed- (“to sit”) + -dʰlom (a variant of -trom), though the Oxford English Dictionary says this “presents formal difficulties”. 2
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA