"His horse [is] … troubled with the lampas, infected with the fashions,
full of windgalls, sped with spavins...." Petruchio's poor, decrepit
horse in Shakespeare's
The Taming of the Shrew is beset by just about every known equine malady, including a kind of swelling in the mouth (
lampas), skin lesions (fashions), tumors on his
fetlocks (
windgalls), and bony enlargements on his
hocks (
spavins).
The spavins alone can be enough to render a horse lame and useless. In
the 17th century, "spavined" horses brought to mind other things that
are obsolete, out-of-date, or long past their prime, and we began using
the adjective figuratively.
Spavined still serves a purpose, despite its age. It originated in Middle English as
spaveyned and can be traced to the Middle French word for
spavin, which was
espavain.
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