HURDLE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Hurdle

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/hˈərdəl/ Listen

noun

Hurdle n.

A movable frame of wattled twigs, osiers, or withes and stakes, or sometimes of iron, used for inclosing land, for folding sheep and cattle, for gates, etc.; also, in fortification, used as revetments, and for other purposes.

In England, a sled or crate on which criminals were formerly drawn to the place of execution.

An artificial barrier, variously constructed, over which men or horses leap in a race.

Hurdle race, a race in which artificial barriers in the form of hurdles, fences, etc., must be leaped.

verb

Hurdle v. t. (past & past part. hurdleed; pres. part. hurdleing) To hedge, cover, make, or inclose with hurdles.

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Etymology of 'Hurdle'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Hurdle" Quotes from Famous Books

... species of Acacia (q.v.), of which there are about 300 in Australia, besides those in Tasmania and New Zealand. There is no English tree of that name, but the English word, which is common, signifies "a twig, a flexible rod, usually a hurdle; . . . the original sense is something twined or woven together; hence it came to mean a hurdle, woven with twigs; Anglo-Saxon, watel, a hurdle." (Skeat.) In England the supple twigs of the osier-willow are used for making such hurdles. The early colonists found the long pliant ...

— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... prey. These matchans often kill many people near Bantam; and often the king and all the people go out to hunt them, sometimes even in the night. This matchan was in a great cage of wood, placed on the trucks of old gun carriages, and being drawn by buffaloes, seemed like a traitor drawn on a hurdle.[131] There were several other curious articles in this shew, with many maskers, vaulters, and tumblers, strangely and savagely attired. Last of all came the youngest son of the king of Jackatra, riding in a chariot drawn by buffaloes, which had to me an unseemly ...

— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr

... deep from railings and riggings and across companionways, and even from the bridge itself. It was not possible to take a step without treading on one of them, and their hammocks made a walk on the deck something like a hurdle race. ...

— Cuba in War Time • Richard Harding Davis

... money lying about, no one kept watch on her, for they knew that if she saw thousands of roubles overlooked by them, she would not have touched a farthing. She scarcely ever went to church. She slept either in the church porch or climbed over a hurdle (there are many hurdles instead of fences to this day in our town) into a kitchen garden. She used at least once a week to turn up "at home," that is at the house of her father's former employers, and in the winter went there every night, and slept either in the passage or the cowhouse. People ...

— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... wages for services rendered. Personal liberty was held to be the privilege of the proprietary class. By a statute of Henry VIII. (1536), children of five years and up, were compelled to labor. A man able to work who refused a proffer of work was, according to law, dragged to the nearest town on a hurdle, stripped, and whipped through the town until his body was covered with blood. For a second offense his right ear was cut off and he received the bastinado. For a third offense he was put to death. An act passed under Edward VI. (1555) provided that the able-bodied laborer refusing work should be ...

— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern

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