roughshod

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English

WOTD – 31 January 2017

Etymology

In this illustration of a horseshoe, the calks are indicated by the letter “C”

From rough +‎ shod.

Pronunciation

Adjective

roughshod (not comparable)

  1. (farriery) Of a horse: having hooves shod with horseshoes that have calks or projecting parts to prevent slipping.
    • 1814 November 10, Miss Berry [Mary Berry], edited by Lady [Maria] Theresa Lewis, Extracts of the Journals and Correspondence of Miss Berry from the year 1783 to 1852. In Three Volumes, volume III, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1865, →OCLC, page 36:
      The horses fell down three times, the roads being slippery, and we walked three miles to Linlithgow. There we waited two hours, to have the fresh horses roughshod.
    • 1875, C. Joyneville , “The French Retreat and the Russian Pursuit”, in Life and Times of Alexander I. Emperor of All the Russias. In Three Volumes, volume II, London: Tinsley Brothers, 8, Catherine Street, Strand, →OCLC, page 227:
      Those who have followed a French army well know that their horses are always rough-shod. [...] Horses can bear cold when properly fed, and if they had not been rough-shod there were farriers attached to the army.
    • 1996, Sandra L. Olsen, “Introduction”, in Sandra L. Olsen, editor, Horses through Time, Boulder, Colo.: Roberts Rinehart Publishers for Carnegie Museum of Natural History, →ISBN, page 8:
      A horse is roughshod when the nails are left protruding out of its shoes so that the animal does not slip and fall. Consequently, being ridden over by a roughshod horse would be quite agonizing.
  2. (by extension) Brutal or domineering.
    • 1995, Leanne Payne, “Matthew's Story: Identity Crisis”, in The Broken Image: Restoring Personal Wholeness through Healing Prayer, Hamewith Books, Baker Publishing Group, →ISBN, page 36:
      She proved to be completely defenseless against her husband, both because of her own culture that demanded abject submission to the male, and because of her fearful reaction to his roughshod behavior toward her.
    • 2005 June 13, Edmund White, “My Women”, in The New Yorker, volume 81, New York, N.Y.: F-R Publishing Corporation, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 120:
      In the roughshod horny world of boys, I had studied my companions closely to make sure that I wasn't being too "queer" for them.
    • 2010, Maryjean Wall, “Old Money Meets the Arrivistes”, in How Kentucky Became Southern: A Tale of Outlaws, Horse Thieves, Gamblers, and Breeders, Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, →ISBN, page 145:
      A story about the way he handled a threatened strike at his Hawthorne track was indicative of the roughshod way he did business. He invited four strike negotiators to his office, where he dealt a knockout blow to each, laying them out unconscious on the floor. Then he went outside and announced that the pending strike was off.

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