palfrey
/ˈpɔːl.fɹi/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.20 in modern English
15
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A small horse with a smooth, ambling gait, popular in the Middle Ages with nobles and women for riding (contrasted with a warhorse).
name
A suburb of Walsall, Metropolitan Borough of Walsall, West Midlands, England (OS grid ref SP0097).
Countable; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "Five warriors seiz'd me yestermorn, / Me, even me, a maid forlorn: / They choked my cries with force and fright, / And tied me on a palfrey white. / The palfrey was as fleet as wind, / And they rode furiously behind."
- "The eye of father and sister alike forgot every other object while watching the evolutions of the young and graceful boy, who realised the descriptions of romance as, his golden curls dancing on the wind, his cheek flushed with exercise, and his large blue eyes dilated and flashing with triumph, he ruled the snow-white palfrey by a wave of the hand and an imperceptible pressure of the knee. It seemed as if the docile creature intuitively divined his will."
- "One of the lords of Argouges, when out hunting one day, met a bevy of twenty ladies of rare beauty, all mounted on palfreys white as the driven snow."
Etymology
From Middle English palfrey, from Anglo-Norman palefrei (“steed”), from Old French palefroi, palefreid, from Late Latin paraverēdus (“post horse, spare horse”), from Ancient Greek παρά (pará) + Latin verēdus (“post horse”), from Gaulish *werēdos (“horse”) (compare Welsh gorwydd (“horse”)), from Proto-Celtic *uɸoreidos (“horse”). Doublet of prad. Compare Dutch paard and German Pferd.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: palfrey, palefrei, palefroi, paraverēdus, παρά, verēdus
Regional Pronunciation
- British English: /ˈpɔːl.fɹi/