Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • A protection for the shoes, hose, etc., from mud and rain, worn especially by horsemen in the seventeenth century.

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

  • noun plural High boots or buskins; in Scotland, short spatterdashes or riding trousers, worn over the other clothing.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun High boots or buskins.
  • noun Scotland Short spatterdashes or riding trousers, worn over the other clothing.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

French gamaches.

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Examples

  • By it are boots of all sizes, buskins, gamashes, brodkins, gambadoes, shoes, pumps, slippers, and every cobbled ware wrought and made steadable for the use of man.

    Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002

  • By it are boots of all sizes, buskins, gamashes, brodkins, gambadoes, shoes, pumps, slippers, and every cobbled ware wrought and made steadable for the use of man.

    Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002

  • Only, instead of the tight-fitting stockings and neat pumps, which should have completed the costume, long leathern gamashes extended from knee to ankle, and were met below the latter by stout high-quartered shoes.

    Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. Various

  • By it are boots of all sizes, buskins, gamashes, brodkins, gambadoes, shoes, pumps, slippers, and every cobbled ware wrought and made steadable for the use of man.

    Gargantua and Pantagruel, Illustrated, Book 3 Fran��ois Rabelais 1518

  • He threw himself as he spoke upon a chair, and indolently, but gracefully, received the kind offices, of Albert, who undid the coarse buttonings of the leathern gamashes which defended his legs, and spoke to him the whilst: — “What a fine specimen of the olden time is your father, Sir Henry!

    Woodstock 1855

  • He threw himself as he spoke upon a chair, and indolently, but gracefully, received the kind offices, of Albert, who undid the coarse buttonings of the leathern gamashes which defended his legs, and spoke to him the whilst: -- "What a fine specimen of the olden time is your father, Sir Henry!

    Woodstock; or, the Cavalier Walter Scott 1801

Comments

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  • How splatter dashing!

    January 3, 2013