Houyhnhnms

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The fictional race of rational, virtuous horses that governs a land of brutish humans in Jonathan Swift's satirical novel Gulliver's Travels
2. In Jonathan Swift's satire Gulliver's Travels, a species of wise and reasonable horses who rule over the degraded Yahoos
3. Imaginary talking horses of exceptional reason and virtue, portrayed in Swift's Gulliver's Travels as the masters of a land of savage humans

Etymology: Jonathan Swift invented the Houyhnhnms for his 1726 satire "Gulliver's Travels," where they are a race of rational horses who rule a land and keep humans as beasts. The name was built to sound like a horse: its odd cluster of consonants and the "hoo" and "hnn" sounds were meant to imitate the whinny and neigh a reader would associate with horses, so the word is onomatopoeic in intent rather than borrowed from any existing language. "Houyhnhnms" is simply the plural of "Houyhnhnm," the singular form Swift used for one such creature. Because the name was made up for a fictional people, it has no older meaning to trace, and its entire history begins with Swift's book.