Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Suffering from the heaves or other impairment of breathing. Used of a horse.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Diseased in the respiratory organs; having the power of breathing impaired by chest-disease: as, a wind-broken horse. Also broken-winded.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Having the power of breathing impaired by the rupture, dilatation, or running together of air cells of the lungs, so that while the inspiration is by one effort, the expiration is by two; affected with pulmonary emphysema or with heaves; -- said of a horse.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • True, they are a merry-go-round of ill-gaited and wind-broken horses, painted first in pastel colors, then in dull grays and browns, but perplexing and intolerably dizzy the thing is, as never were the merry-go-rounds of childhood or adolescence; as never, surely, were the certain-coursed, dynamic roller-coasters of youth.

    Tales of the Jazz Age 2003

  • He climbed the rain-soaked ratlines, negotiated the lubber's hole and trained his telescope north, but he could see nothing except a wind-broken sea and a mass of clouds on the horizon.

    Sharpe's Trafalgar Cornwell, Bernard, 1944- 2000

  • The sound of the American gunfire came over the wind-broken water like a growl of thunder, then the lugger was spinning about, sails rippling as the American skipper let his speed carry him through the wind's eye, until, taut on the opposite tack, he headed back past the brig's counter towards the fleet of chasse-marees.

    Sharpe's Siege Cornwell, Bernard 1987

  • The weather was cooler, so horses could run longer without becoming wind-broken, and there was less chance of cattle dying from overheating.

    This Calder Range Janet Dailey 1982

  • The weather was cooler, so horses could run longer without becoming wind-broken, and there was less chance of cattle dying from overheating.

    This Calder Range Janet Dailey 1982

  • I have now come hither on a wind-broken and spring-halt horse, for which I did pay a price to a thief.

    A Boy's Ride Gulielma Zollinger

  • They are old, wind-broken, incapable of carrying a big message.

    Business Correspondence Anonymous

  • The success of all the buds on the wind-broken shoots was undoubtedly due to the forcing of the cambium growth just at the point where the bud was inserted.

    Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913

  • Here is the concrete representation of the earnest desire, the momentarily frustrate purpose, the beating at the bars, the breathless fighting of the half-whipped but never-to-be-conquered spirit, the sobbing of the wind-broken runner, the anger, the madness, the laughter.

    The River and I John G. Neihardt 1927

  • Very quickly the neighborhood discovered this propensity of his, and there was a constant stream of farmers who came to offer second-hand buggies, and wind-broken horses, and dried-up cows, and patent hay-rakes and churns and corn-shellers at reduced values; all of which rather tended to reveal to Thyrsis the unlovely aspects of his neighbors, and to weaken his faith in the perfectibility of the race.

    Love's Pilgrimage Upton Sinclair 1923

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