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''colt'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260915190735-00-⌔

colt - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Noun

colt (plural colts)

  • A young male horse.
    • ✤ Coordinate term: filly
    • ✤ The petty vices of boys are like the innocent kicks of colts, as yet imperfectly broken.1
  • A young crane (bird).
  • (figuratively) A youthful or inexperienced person; a novice.
    • ✤ Ay, that’s a colt indeed, for he doth nothing but/talk of his horse, and he makes it a great appropriation to/his own good parts that he can shoe him himself.2
    • (cricket, slang) A professional cricketer during his first season.
      • ✤ The bowling is more promising in the colts than in the eleven.3
    • (slang, obsolete) A person who sits as a juryman for the first time.
  • (nautical, historical) A short piece of rope once used by petty officers as an instrument of punishment.
  • (obsolete, slang) A weapon formed by slinging a small shot to the end of a somewhat stiff piece of rope.
  • (biblical) A young camel or donkey.

Verb

colt (third-person singular simple present colts, present participle colting, simple past and past participle colted)

  • (obsolete, transitive) To horse; to get with young.
    • ✤ Never talk on’t:/She hath been colted by him.4
  • (obsolete, transitive) To befool.
    • ✤ What a plague mean ye to colt me thus?5
  • (intransitive) To frisk or frolic like a colt; to act licentiously or wantonly.
    • ✤ They shook off their bridles and began to colt.6
  • (obsolete, slang, transitive) To haze (a new recruit), as by charging a new juryman a “fine” to be spent on alcoholic drink, or by striking the sole of his foot with a board, etc.
    • ✤ We watched our opportunity, seized him, and, laying him across a chest, we colted him with a boot-jack until we nearly killed him, he at the time suffering from numerous boils in the nates; and for all this he obtained no redress!7
    • ✤ […] his first appearance the jury duly “colted” him.8

Etymology

From Middle English colt, from Old English colt, from Proto-Germanic ﹡kultaz (“plump; stump; thick shape, bulb”), from Proto-Indo-European ﹡gelt- (“something round, pregnant belly, child in the womb”), from ﹡gel- (“to ball up, amass”). Cognate with Faroese koltur (“colt, foal”) Norwegian kult (“treestump”), Swedish kult (“young boar, piglet, boy, lad”)/Swedish kulting (“piglet”). Related to child.

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /kəʊlt/, [kɔʊlt], (doll–dole merger)/kɒlt/
  • (Standard Southern British) IPA: /kəwlt/, [kɔwlt], (doll–dole merger)/kɔlt/
  • (US) IPA: /koʊlt/
    • Audio (California): 🔊
    • Audio (Texas): 🔊
  • (Scotland) IPA: /kolt/
  • (Wales, without the toe–tow merger) IPA: /koult/
  • Rhymes: -əʊlt
  • Homophone: cult (gulf–golf merger, doll–dole merger)

Printed 2026-09-15.

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Footnotes

  1. 1857, Herman Melville, chapter XXII, in The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade: ↩

  2. c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii], line 38: ↩

  3. 1882, The Downside Review, volume 1, page 287: ↩

  4. 1611 April (first recorded performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Cymbeline”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene iv], line 133: ↩

  5. c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene ii], line 36: ↩

  6. 1596 (date written; published 1633), Edmund Spenser, A Vewe of the Present State of Irelande […], Dublin: […] Societie of Stationers, […], →OCLC; republished as A View of the State of Ireland […] (Ancient Irish Histories), Dublin: […] Society of Stationers, […] Hibernia Press, […] [b] y John Morrison, 1809, →OCLC: ↩

  7. 1849, The Lancet, page 53: ↩

  8. 1923, Notes and Queries, page 153: ↩

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