Houyhnhnm

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A fictional race of rational, virtuous horses who rule a land in Jonathan Swift's satirical novel Gulliver's Travels
2. In Jonathan Swift's satire Gulliver's Travels, a imaginary species of wise horses that govern the country and value reason above all
3. The name given in Swift's Gulliver's Travels to a noble, reasonable breed of talking horses that stands in contrast to humankind

Etymology: Jonathan Swift invented this word himself for his 1726 satire Gulliver's Travels, where the Houyhnhnms are a race of rational horses who govern the land and prize reason above everything else. The name is a deliberate piece of wordplay: it imitates the whinny or neigh that a horse makes, so the species is named after the very sound that marks it as a horse to human ears. Swift's invention works because the spelling and sound look like nothing in English, yet a reader can hear a horse in them at once. Coined in the early eighteenth century, the word has no older history to trace; it belongs entirely to Swift's imagination and to the satirical world he built around it.