roughshod
/ˈɹʌfʃɑd/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.25 in modern English
17
Scrabble Score
9
Letters
2
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Of a horse: having hooves shod with horseshoes that have calks or projecting parts to prevent slipping.
adj
Brutal or domineering.
Example Sentences
- "The horses fell down three times, the roads being slippery, and we walked three miles to Linlithgow. There we waited two hours, to have the fresh horses roughshod."
- "Those who have followed a French army well know that their horses are always rough-shod. [...] Horses can bear cold when properly fed, and if they had not been rough-shod there were farriers attached to the army."
- "A horse is roughshod when the nails are left protruding out of its shoes so that the animal does not slip and fall. Consequently, being ridden over by a roughshod horse would be quite agonizing."
- "She proved to be completely defenseless against her husband, both because of her own culture that demanded abject submission to the male, and because of her fearful reaction to his roughshod behavior toward her."
- "In the roughshod horny world of boys, I had studied my companions closely to make sure that I wasn't being too "queer" for them."
- "A story about the way he handled a threatened strike at his Hawthorne track was indicative of the roughshod way he did business. He invited four strike negotiators to his office, where he dealt a knockout blow to each, laying them out unconscious on the floor. Then he went outside and announced that the pending strike was off."
Etymology
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈɹʌfʃɑd/
- British English: /ˈɹʌfʃɒd/