HURDLE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • 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

... his party first shut up their horses in the old refectory, closing the entrance with a hurdle, and then dispersed over the ruins. Mary had brought her drawing-pad, that she might sketch a magnificent pillar, and the remains of a transept arch which rose gracefully behind it, crowned with drooping ivy, and disclosing in the back ground, through ...

— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson

... the perspiration running down my face. I began to understand, now, what was meant by the words high treason. I saw all the majesty of the English Navy, all the law, all the noble polity of England, arrayed to judge a boy to death, for a five minutes' prank. They would drag me on a hurdle to Tyburn, as soon as torture had made ...

— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield

... with slender boughs. We also set to work at shaping the stakes, which I drove into the ground by means of a stone, which served as a hammer. Some branches, interwoven and tied together by creepers, formed a kind of hurdle, which, fixed on the top of the posts, did for a roof. The Indian, assisted by his little companion, who was much interested in all the preparations, filled the hut with leaves, and covered the branches with a layer ...

— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart

... wishes to fence in a perfectly square field which is to contain just as many acres as there are rails in the required fence. Each hurdle, or portion of fence, is seven rails high, and two lengths would extend one pole (161/2 ft.): that is to say, there are fourteen rails to the pole, lineal measure. Now, what must be the size of ...

— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... interest. But Anna afterwards could only recall it with real pain. The crisis came on a racecourse. One of Vronsky's chief pleasures was horse-racing, and at the brilliant races that season he himself rode his own splendid horse. But the occasion was a most disastrous one, for at the hurdle races more than half the riders were thrown, Vronsky being one of them. He was picked up uninjured, but the horse had its ...

— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

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