Windsucking

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. A stable vice in horses in which the animal arches its neck and swallows air, often while gripping a fixture with its teeth
2. The habit of a horse repeatedly gulping air into its stomach, a behaviour linked to boredom and digestive discomfort
3. A repetitive equine stable behaviour in which the animal swallows air while bracing against a surface, causing a distinctive noise

Etymology: Windsucking is a compound of "wind" and "sucking," and its meaning is literal: a horse that gulps air into its stomach, often over a stable door or fence, is doing exactly what the two parts describe. The word is used most often of horses that have this habit, a vice that can cause colic and weight loss, and it has been applied in that equine sense for as long as horse-keepers have needed a name for it. "Wind" here is the old sense of breath or air taken into the body, the same root that gives "wind" in "winded," while "sucking" keeps its plain meaning of drawing something in through the mouth. Neither element has been reshaped by the compound, so the word reads just as its parts suggest. It is a straightforward descriptive coinage rather than a term with a twisted history.