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Horseshoes   /hˈɔrsʃˌuz/   Listen
Horseshoes

noun
1.
A game in which iron rings (or open iron rings) are thrown at a stake in the ground in the hope of encircling it.  Synonym: quoits.






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"Horseshoes" Quotes from Famous Books



... you have not forgot how, fifteen years ago, when you made horseshoes in the little dingle by the side of the great north road, I lent you fifty cottors [guineas] to purchase the wonderful trotting cob of the innkeeper with the green Newmarket coat, which three days after you sold for two hundred. Well, brother, if you had wanted the two ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... by well-shod horses," said the sergeant, after examining the tracks critically. "Now, we've plenty of horseshoes and the Johnnies haven't. ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler

... street before the buildings on each corner, and the dirt beneath was worn away by the scraping of the feet of the many horses that had been tied to the rails. Just below the corner, on Cross Street, were other holes worn by tossing horseshoes at pegs, which, if America was composed of small towns only, would be our ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler

... mustang, and, making a small bundle of his few supplies, he tied that to the tarpaulin. His blanket he used for a saddle blanket on Nagger. Of the utensils left by the Stewarts he chose a couple of small iron pans, with long handles. The rest he left. In his saddle bags he had a few extra horseshoes, some nails, bullets for his rifle, and a knife with ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various

... XI., who frequently visited this church to pray to Notre Dame d'Embrun, that white marble image of the Virgin and Child over the altar fronting the northern entrance. On the inside of the northern doorway (left hand) are two horseshoes, not exactly of the same size. It is said that Lesdiguires, the Protestant leader, attempting to ride into the church to the altar of the image of Notre Dame, the horse reared, and the shoes of its hind hoofs sticking to the pavement, ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black

... moment, the fog lifted. The gun was quickly laid on the wagon train and fired, the first shot beheading a mule. The second shell hit the best sort of target imaginable—a mobile farrier's forge. There was a deadly shower of horseshoes, hand-tools and assorted ironmongery, inflicting casualties and causing a local panic. The third shell landed among some cavalry who were galloping up, scattering them, and, on the signal, ...
— Rebel Raider • H. Beam Piper

... These Gipsies can do anything with the earth, the ore, the sand. Snaffles, whose side-bars no brute can baffle, locks that would puzzle a locksmith, horseshoes that turn on a swivel, bells for the sheep . . . all these are good, but what they can ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne

... found something better than stones—for in the field right beside the road they discovered a veritable treasure, a pile of horseshoes, rusty and worn, that had been piled up there evidently by some farmer, against the time when he should decide to carry them all to the blacksmith to be used again. In some nails still projected; all of them, at any rate, had some sharp ...
— The Belgians to the Front • Colonel James Fiske

... night." He was passionately fond of all bodily exercises, the practice of arms, and the game of tennis. "He had a forge set up for himself," says Brantome, "and I have seen him forging cannon, and horseshoes, and other things as stoutly as the most robust farriers and forgemen." He, at the same time, showed a keen and intelligent interest in intellectual works and pleasures. He often had a meeting, in the evening, of poets, men of letters, and artists—Ronsard, Amadis Jamin, Jodelle, Daurat, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... conservative by instinct, with centuries of caste feeling behind them, have unreservedly and with acclamation placed their fate in the hands of one who began life as a village boy. It was but recently I was talking with a blacksmith hammering out horseshoes at Llanystumdwy in Wales who was a school-mate of Lloyd George in those days not so very long ago. The Prime Minister still has his home down there and talks to the blacksmith and to others of his school ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot

... at seventy-nine, we'd never have heard of him. If Moses had retired to a checkerboard in the grocery store or to pitching horseshoes up the alley and talking about "ther winter of fifty-four," he would have become the seventeenth mummy on the thirty-ninth row ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette

... just grand of Kenneth and Rosamond," said Dakie Thayne, as he and Ruth were walking home up West Hill in the moonlight, afterward. "What do you think you and I ought to do, one of these days, Ruthie? It sets me to considering. There are more Horseshoes to make, I suppose, if the world ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... would fling both arms heavenward and repeat the exclamation. He had rated himself the unique human soul at Fort Brown able to count and arrange underclothing. Augustus rejected his laborious tally, and together they vigiled after hours, verifying socks and drawers. Next, Augustus found more horseshoes than his ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister

... most extraordinary. Would Mr. Wadgers come round? He was a knowing man, was Mr. Wadgers, and very resourceful. He took quite a grave view of the case. "Arm darmed if thet ent witchcraft," was the view of Mr. Sandy Wadgers. "You warnt horseshoes for ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells

... up at the landing shortly after two o'clock. The usual crowd of onlookers thronged the bank, attention being temporarily diverted from an important game of "horseshoes" that was taking place in the sugar ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon

... with his work. From a bar of iron he made four horseshoes. These he hammered and shaped and fitted to the horse's feet. Then he ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin

... make them old Carey plows and was good at makin' the mould board out of hardwood. He make the best Carey plows in that part of the country and he make horseshoes and nails and everything out of iron. And he used to make spinning wheels and parts of looms. He was a very valuable man and he make wheels and the hub and put ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration

... the Cape Fear River in North Carolina from which oil was manufactured. Every wayside blacksmith shop was utilized as a government factory for the production of horseshoes for the cavalry. ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... just common things. But all my people were mechanics, harness makers, shoemakers,—they could make anything. Young Sam Parker could make any kind of shoe. He made shoes for the white folks; Young Jacob was a blacksmith; he made horseshoes and anything else out of iron. He may still be living. In fact, he made anything he could get his hands on. My young uncles on my mother's side, I don't know much about them, because they were all mechanics. My grandfather on my mother's side could make baskets—any ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration

... Night precaution must be taken against witches who may harm cattle. The stable doors are locked and sealed with three crosses. Sprigs of ash, hawthorn, juniper, and elder, once sacred to the pagan gods, are now used as a protection against them. Horseshoes are nailed prongs up on the threshold or over the door. Holy bells are hung on the cows to scare away the witches, and they are guided to pasture by a goad which has been blessed. Shots are fired over the cornfield. If one wishes, he may hide in the ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley

... number of canoes, large and small, full of people, according to what he says. Afterwards in the afternoon there came more from all the territory, many of whom wore at the neck pieces of gold of the size of horseshoes. It appeared that they had a great deal of it: but they gave it all for hawks' bells and he did not take it. And this is strange that a man as provident as the Admiral and desiring to make discoveries should not have seized this opportunity for trading, as ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... all the children, And I'll help you if I can, Just tell me what your wishes are, For I'm the Wishing Man. I have wishbones on my fingers, I have myst'ry in my eyes, My clothes are trimmed with horseshoes, And they're stained with magic dyes. My pocket's full of rabbits' feet, And clover leaves and charms, For luck I've got a big black cat All tattooed on my arms, I'm a friend of all the children, And I'll help you if I can, So tell me what your wishes ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare

... and ploughings, ancient fairs, the boundaries of fields long since flooded over, of a visit to Boston that King Edward IV had made, and of how he, for his fair speech and old lineage, had been chosen of all the Radigund's men to present into the King's hands three silver horseshoes. Behind his back was a great dresser with railed shelves, having upon them a little pewter ware and many wooden bowls for the hinds' feeding. A door on the right side, painted black, went down ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford

... She asks William Allen to place her "on top of that horse," whereupon he puts his large brown hands about her waist, and, swinging her to and fro, lifts her on horseback. William threatens to rivet two horseshoes round her neck, for having clambered, with the other girls and boys, upon a load of hay, whereby the said load lost its balance and slid off the cart. She strings the seed-berries of roses together, ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... mud roof was covered with lynx, beaver, and other furs laid out to dry, beaver paws were pinned out on the logs, a part of the carcass of a deer hung at one end of the cabin, a skinned beaver lay in front of a heap of peltry just within the door, and antlers of deer, old horseshoes, and offal of many animals, lay about ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird

... of a child who unchristened Died, and was doomed to haunt unseen the chambers of children; And how on Christmas eve the oxen talked in the stable, And how the fever was cured by a spider shut up in a nutshell, And of the marvellous powers of four-leaved clover and horseshoes, With whatsoever else was writ in the lore of the village. Then up rose from his seat by the fireside Basil the blacksmith, Knocked from his pipe the ashes, and slowly extending his right hand, "Father Leblanc," he exclaimed, "thou hast ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... Crook. "Look at Jupiter—there, just to the left of that little cottonwood-tree. Haven't you often noticed how much finer the stars shine in this atmosphere than in the East? Oh, captain! I forgot to speak of extra horseshoes. I ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... a game not played as much as it should be by American boys. It is easy to arrange, for although there is an outfit sold in the toy shops, a home-made one is just as good. It consists of a collection of horseshoes and a stake driven in the ground—certainly not a difficult apparatus to assemble. The stake should not project more than an inch above the ground and the players, according to the grown-up rules, should stand about fifteen yards away from the stake ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... here, in this solitude, very contentedly; so that it is only reasonable to suppose that I shall continue to live here, and make horseshoes—though, really," I broke off, letting my eyes wander from my companion's upturned face back to the glowing sky, once more, "there is little I could tell you about so commonplace a person as myself that is likely to ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol

... name, brought with them from the country from which they originally came; it is compounded of two words, signifying, as has been already observed, horseshoe fellows, or people whose trade is to manufacture horseshoes, a trade which the Gypsies ply in various parts of the world, - for example, in Russia and Hungary, and more particularly about Granada in Spain, as will subsequently be shown. True it is, that at present there are none amongst the English Gypsies who manufacture horseshoes; ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... to the lattice-work of a marble window as an earnest of their maternal worthiness. It is visited also by the devout for various purposes, among others by those whose horses are sick and who nail votive horseshoes to the great gate. According to tradition the mother of Jahangir was a Christian named Miriam, and her house and garden may be seen, the house having the traces of a fresco which by those who greatly ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas

... approaching a place of some fame in Britain- -Gretna Green. Over these same leagues of road—which Rowley and I now traversed in the claret-coloured chaise, to the note of the flageolet and the French lesson—how many pairs of lovers had gone bowling northwards to the music of sixteen scampering horseshoes; and how many irate persons, parents, uncles, guardians, evicted rivals, had come tearing after, clapping the frequent red face to the chaise-window, lavishly shedding their gold about the post- houses, sedulously loading and re-loading, as they went, ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of the village blacksmith who laughed when he was shown a French horseshoe which had been found on the road, and said: "Not one of these horses will leave Russia if the army remains till frost sets in!" The French horseshoes had neither pins nor barbed hooks, and it would be impossible for horses thus shod to draw cannons and heavy wagons up and down hill over frozen and ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose

... Nan Blythe uncurled herself from the hammock where she had been studying her lessons and slipped away to Rainbow Valley. The others were already there. Jem and Jerry were playing quoits with old horseshoes borrowed from the Glen blacksmith. Carl was stalking ants on a sunny hillock. Walter, lying on his stomach among the fern, was reading aloud to Mary and Di and Faith and Una from a wonderful book of myths wherein were fascinating accounts of Prester John and the Wandering ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... Here where the colts have room to gambol in, And kine to graze, in clover to the knee. I want to see your wan face happily Lit with the wholesome smiles that have not been In use since the old games you used to win When we pitched horseshoes: And I want to be At utter loaf with you in this dim land Of grove and meadow, while the crickets make Our own talk tedious, and the bat wields His bulky flight, as we cease converse and In a dusk like velvet smoothly take Our way toward home across ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley

... that I had been expected to secure the fall crops on mother's lot, and this was not unreasonable, for I had married a Pennsylvania farmer, and their wives and sisters and daughters did such work often, while the "men folks" pitched horseshoes to work off their surplus vitality. Lack of strength was no reason why a woman should fail in her duty, for when one fell at her post, there was always another to take ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm

... piously bestowed it upon the Archbishop of Canterbury, and returned an answer to the address, wherein he gave them golden rules for discovering witches, and laid great stress upon certain protecting charms, and especially horseshoes. Immediately the towns-people went to work nailing up horseshoes over every door, and so many anxious parents apprenticed their children to farriers to keep them out of harm's way, that it became quite a genteel trade, and ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens

... Ferrars were at one time Lords of the Manor, Edmund de Ferrars dying in 1438. The ancient public-house sign of "The Three Horseshoes" was taken from ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... white and another of black; his nose was crossbarred with black and red; his legs were painted in zebra stripes of yellow and black; the patches of white that were native to his coat were outlined with black and profusely decorated with red hands and horseshoes painted in vermilion; on his neck was a band of beadwork, carrying a little bundle of sacred medicine; and, last, he had on each ankle a string of sleigh-bells that jingled at each prancing step. ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton

... and so on. Poor Bertucca! Few of those who in later years saw Mme. Maretzek, portly and sedate, enter the orchestra at the Academy of Music and Metropolitan Opera House, and tune her harp while the audience was gathering in the gilded horseshoes above, recalled that she had been the sprightly and bewitching Bertucca of ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... look them up out there," said Christopher, resisting the invitation to enter. "I want to get a pair of horseshoes from Jim; the gray mare cast hers yesterday, and Dick Boxley is laid up with a sprained arm. Oh, no, thanks; I must be going back." With a friendly nod he turned from the steps and went rapidly along the path which led ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... are portions of the skulls of men and of oxen, the antlers of red deer, oyster shells, knives, spear-heads, arrow-heads, bits of locks with keys, and excellent horseshoes, not to speak of such things as bronze spurs, spoons, part of a Roman weighing-machine, and a splendid pair of compasses. There are pieces of earthenware with potter's marks on them, and red tiles bearing unmistakable marks of fingering, ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... I have said. I cannot be a tavern keeper here the rest of my days with nothing to do half of the time except to watch the men pitch horseshoes behind the blacksmith shop, and listen to the flies buzz in the windows on summer afternoons; and everything else so quiet and dead you don't know whether you are on the street or in the graveyard. If you'd ever crossed the Mississippi River you'd ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter

... Billy—grievous hard work, while you are just playing at making horseshoes, fence ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards

... are nearly all done. Mine is very lame in its hind legs. As far as horseflesh goes, he is the least objectionable brute I have had, though his ignorance and lack of appreciation of kindness is appalling. We have drawn horseshoes for five weeks, so it does not look like returning to Pretoria just yet. If we had drawn horses it would have been more to the purpose. We are having tea now, and have just drawn our biscuits for the next 24 hours. They number ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross

... the harpoon and removing with our hands the loosened stones. We found a quantity of antique coins of various sizes, which, by reason of their lightness, I suppose, were much scattered about. Then deeper down below these we came upon a number of large rings, or bracelets, in the form of horseshoes, and several ingots of silver, similar to the one Hercus ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton

... nail up horseshoes and mark their door-stones with charms to keep the evil spirit out,' ran on Lady Knollys, who looked pale and angry, in her way, 'but you open your door in the dark and invoke unknown danger. How can you look at that child that's—she's not ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... of him there came back to his ears the clang and thud of iron horseshoes upon granite, the rattle of rocks along the trail; now and again he saw a spark struck out underfoot. Then, far ahead as the canon widened suddenly and a little thinning of the darkness resulted, ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory

... bat and ball, battledore and shuttlecock, la grace; pall- mall, tipcat^, croquet, golf, curling, pallone^, polo, water polo; tent pegging; tilting at the ring, quintain [Mediev.]; greasy pole; quoits, horseshoes, discus; rounders, lacrosse; tobogganing, water polo; knurr and spell^. [childrens' games] leapfrog, hop skip and jump; mother may I; French and English, tug of war; blindman's bluff, hunt the slopper^, hide and seek, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... on the Derwent, contains some memorials of the battle. Horseshoes, swords, and the heads of halberds, or bills, are often found there; one place is called the "Danes' well," another the "Battle flats." From a tradition that the weapon with which the Norwegian champion was slain, resembled a pear, or, as others say, that the ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... conversation with considerable elbow motion and the rattle and clang of shaping horseshoes. Presently Dobe was new shod and ready for the road. Bartley paid the smith, thanked him for a good job, and rode south. Evidently Cheyenne's open quarrel with Sears was the talk of the countryside. It was expected ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... and mounted. Brandur was left alone in the darkness at mid-day. Yet in his mind's eye he could see the haystack out on the knoll. He rose and went out to feel it. It was still there. Gudrun had not ridden away with it. Brandur could hear the horseshoes crunching the hard, frozen ground as Gudrun rode off. He stood motionless for a long time, listening to the hoof beats. Then he ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various

... meant a long delay. Meanwhile, the Spaniards under command of Canterac were advancing against Trujillo. Bolvar set to work again with that feverish activity which seemed to enable him to create everything from nothing—men, uniforms, arms, horses, even horseshoes. The smallest detail, near or at a distance, was the object of his care, and he attended to everything with that precision and accuracy which form a great proportion of what we ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell

... plague of witchcraft, which had long been prevalent to the eastward. The malady broke out at Vest Dorp, and threatened to spread throughout the country. The Dutch burghers along the Hudson, from Yonkers to Sleepy Hollow, hastened to nail horseshoes to their doors, which have ever been found of sovereign virtue to repel this awful visitation. This is the origin of the horse-shoes which may still be seen nailed to the doors of barns and farmhouses, in various parts of this sage and ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... of the Army Ordnance, which supply everything that the soldier doesn't eat, all metal stores—nails, horseshoes, oil-cans, barbed wire—by the ton; trenching-tools, wheelbarrows, pickaxes, razors, sand-bags, knives, screws, shovels, picketing-pegs, and the like—they are of course endless; and the men who work in them are housed in one ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... him on all fours with his eye hanging out on his cheek. There was besides, let me think—Yes! the room where a man was found dead in bed with a horseshoe mark on his forehead, and the floor under the bed was covered with marks of horseshoes also; I don't know why. Also there was the lady who, on locking her bedroom door in a strange house, heard a thin voice among the bed-curtains say, "Now we're shut in for the night." None of those had any explanation or sequel. I wonder if ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James

... passing the barrier of ice which lay between the ships and the whaling-grounds; and yet these must be reached before June, or the year's expedition would be of little avail. Every blacksmith's shop rung with the rhythmical clang of busy hammers, beating out old iron, such as horseshoes, nails or stubs, into the great harpoons; the quays were thronged with busy and important sailors, rushing hither and thither, conscious of the demand in which they were held at this season of the year. ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell

... the Cowan twins, being then nine years old, set out from the Penniman home to pick wild blackberries along certain wooded lanes that environed the town. They were bare-footed, wearing knee pants buttoned to calico waists, these being patterned with small horseshoes which the twins had been told by their father would bring them good luck. They wore cloth caps, and carried tin pails for their berries. These would be sold to the Pennimans at an agreed price of five cents a quart, and it was Winona's hope that the money thus earned on a beautiful ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson



Words linked to "Horseshoes" :   outdoor game, leaner, ringer



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