Mearh

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An archaic Old English word for a horse, especially a steed used for riding or war
2. A term from early English meaning a horse or steed, preserved in historical and poetic texts
3. Old English for a horse or steed, a word now found only in older literature and scholarship

Etymology: Mearh is an Old English word meaning "horse," and it survives in English today only in the form "mare" as a term for a female horse, though the two are not related in that direct way. Its ancestors reach back to Proto-Germanic "marhaz," which also gave Old High German "marah" and Old Norse "marr," all meaning horse. Unlike the words for many domestic animals, this one never spread through the common vocabulary of English, and the older sense of the word is now found mainly in historical texts and in the Old English poetry where it appears. The word is closely tied to the Old English term "mearh" and its cousins, and one of its most striking connections is to the Latin "mannus," a word for a small horse or pony, which shares a similar Indo-European ancestry. Scholars link these forms through a reconstructed root, though the exact pathway is debated, so the connection should be read as probable rather than settled.