Barn Sour, Cribbing, Bombproof: Horse Slang Decoded for Non-Horse People

Horse people speak a dialect in which “green” is not a colour, “sound” is not a noise and “a bit forward” is a warning. If someone in your life has started saying these things, here is what they mean. Every definition is correct; the commentary is free. For the full reference version, see our horse term glossary and the rest of the glossaries.

The Horse’s Personality, in Code

Barn sour
A horse that does not want to leave home. It balks, plants its feet or turns back when asked to head away from the barn, then makes the return trip at twice the speed. Has nothing to do with milk.

Buddy sour (also herd bound)
The same problem, except that home is another horse. Take the friend away and you get screaming, spinning and a performance of abandonment that would shame an opera.

Ring sour
A horse that has had enough of arenas and says so at the gate. Usually a sign of too much drilling and not enough variety. The horse has a point.

Bombproof
A horse that stays calm around traffic, flags, dogs, bicycles and brass bands. Not a guarantee, whatever the advert says. Every bombproof horse has one thing, and you will find out what it is at the worst possible moment. (We keep a field guide.)

Dead broke
Extremely well trained and quiet. A compliment for the horse. Also, by coincidence, the financial position of its owner.

Green
Inexperienced: a horse (or rider) in the early stages of training. Nothing to do with colour, which is why a “green chestnut” makes sense.

Green on green
A novice rider on a novice horse. The traditional barn warning is that green plus green makes black and blue.

Hot
Energetic, sensitive and quick to react. Not a temperature and not a compliment about its looks. The opposite is quiet or, less kindly, dead to the leg.

Hot-blooded, cold-blooded, warmblood
Types, not body temperatures. Hot-bloods are the light, fast, reactive breeds such as the Arabian and Thoroughbred. Cold-bloods are the heavy, calm draft breeds such as the Percheron and Clydesdale. Warmbloods are the sport horses bred between the two. All of them are mammals with the same normal temperature.

Forward
Likes to go. “Nicely forward” means willing. “Very forward” means you will be arriving early.

Fresh
Full of energy, typically after time off or on the first cold morning of autumn. A fresh horse is not being bad. It simply has more to give than was asked for.

Looky
Inclined to stare at things and consider leaving. One step below spooky, which means it leaves.

Mare-ish
Behaving in a way that people blame on being a mare: opinionated, ticklish, touchy about her space. Sometimes linked to her being in season. Often just an opinion, held firmly.

Schoolmaster
An older, experienced horse that knows the job better than the rider and teaches it. Worth their weight in gold and usually aware of it. Americans may say packer: a horse that carries its rider safely round regardless of what the rider is doing up there.

Push-button
So well trained that the correct aid produces the correct movement every time. The catch is that you have to know where the buttons are.

Husband horse
A calm, forgiving horse suitable for the family member who rides twice a year. Not a comment on anyone’s marriage.

Pasture puff (also pasture ornament)
A horse whose only job is to stand in a field looking decorative, through retirement, injury or an owner’s busy calendar.

Habits With Odd Names

Cribbing (also crib-biting)
The horse grips a solid edge such as a fence rail or stable door with its front teeth, arches its neck, pulls back and gulps air with a grunt. Nothing to do with babies or cheating in exams. It is a stereotypy, a repetitive behaviour linked to management: studies associate it with limited turnout, little forage and a lot of grain. It wears down teeth and fences, and it is managed more than cured, with more turnout, more forage and more company. Barn lore says horses copy it from each other; that has never been shown scientifically.

Windsucking
The same air-gulping without holding on to anything. Yes, they are different, and yes, horse people will correct you.

Weaving
Swaying from one front foot to the other, usually over a stable door. Another stereotypy, generally a sign that the horse wants more movement and company than it is getting.

Cold-backed
A horse that flinches, humps or sinks when the saddle goes on or the rider first sits down, then usually walks out of it. Sometimes habit, sometimes pain, which is why the sensible first step is a vet and a saddle fitter.

Girthy (also cinchy)
Objects to the girth being done up: ears back, snapping at the air, swelling up like a bagpipe. Like cold-backed, it can mean discomfort, including stomach ulcers, so it is worth mentioning to your vet and not just laughing off.

Cast
Not broken-leg plaster. A cast horse has lain down or rolled so close to a wall or fence that it cannot get its legs under it to stand. It is a real emergency: the horse may thrash, so get experienced help and keep out of range of the legs.

Body and Health

Hand
The unit horses are measured in, to the top of the withers. One hand is four inches. The number after the point is inches, not tenths, so 15.2 means fifteen hands and two inches, and 15.3 is followed by 16.0. A horse advertised at 15.5 hands does not exist.

Sound
Not lame; moving evenly with no sign of pain. “Is he sound?” is the first question about any horse. “Serviceably sound” means sound enough for the job described and should be read slowly.

Off
A little bit lame, or not quite right. As in “he’s a bit off behind.” Horse people can see this from across a field and cannot explain how.

Easy keeper (in Britain, a good doer)
A horse that stays fat on very little food. It sounds like a blessing and is a full-time job, because these are the horses most at risk of obesity and laminitis. Our weight calculator, feeding calculator and guide to body condition scoring help with keeping track.

Hard keeper (poor doer)
The opposite: eats like a horse and still looks like a hat rack. Worth a conversation with your vet about teeth, worms and diet.

Hay belly
A round, low-slung belly on a horse that may be quite lean along its top. Often blamed on poor-quality forage. Not the same thing as being fat.

Floating
Filing down the sharp points that form on a horse’s teeth as they wear. Done by a vet or equine dentist, usually once or twice a year. No water is involved.

Colic
The one word on this page nobody jokes about. It means abdominal pain, and it ranges from mild to life-threatening. A horse that is pawing, rolling, sweating, looking at its flanks or off its food needs a call to the vet straight away.

Proud cut
A gelding that still behaves like a stallion. Tradition blames a careless castration. Vets say that when hormones really are involved the usual cause is a retained testicle, and that a lot of “proud cut” behaviour is simply learned. A blood test can settle it.

Coggins
In the United States, the blood test for equine infectious anemia, named after the vet who developed it, Dr. Leroy Coggins. “Got your Coggins?” means “do you have the paperwork to travel or show?” and is never a question about a person.

Chestnut
A colour, and also the small horny patch on the inside of each leg. A chestnut horse has four chestnuts. So does a grey one.

Frog
The rubbery V-shaped pad on the underside of the hoof. See our hoof anatomy guide. No amphibians are harmed.

Who’s Who

Gelding
A castrated male horse. Most male riding horses are geldings, because most stallions have other things on their minds.

Colt and filly
A young male and a young female. A baby of either sex is a foal; “colt” is not the word for all of them.

Grade horse
A horse with no registration papers or known pedigree. Often an excellent horse. The horse has never been bothered about the papers.

Near side and off side
The horse’s left and right. You lead, saddle and mount from the near side by tradition.

Things Horse People Say

Tack
Saddles, bridles and the rest of the riding equipment. “Tacking up” is putting it on. Not to be confused with tacky, which describes the tack after rain. Start with English tack terminology.

Mucking out
Removing manure and wet bedding from the stable. Done daily, including birthdays and Christmas morning.

Turnout
Either time loose in the field, or how smartly a horse and rider are presented at a show. “Good turnout” at a competition is praise. “Needs more turnout” is advice about a bored horse.

On the bit
Not chewing it. The horse is accepting a soft contact with the rider’s hands and working through its whole body. Riders spend decades on this. See our dressage glossaries for where it leads.

Wrong lead
At the canter one front leg reaches further forward than the other, and on a circle it should be the inside one. If it isn’t, an instructor somewhere is already shouting.

Half-halt
A brief, barely visible rebalancing signal from the rider. Everyone agrees it is essential. No two instructors explain it the same way.

“Just popping to the yard for five minutes.”
Expect them back after dark.

Keep Going

Once the basics make sense, every discipline has its own dialect: English show terms, Western show terms, reining, cutting, roping and the racing glossary. Or skip the vocabulary and learn by doing in Stable Days.