☼ Concept Map

''halter'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

↩ 🔳 🔳 🔳

Primary

⁀➴

''halter'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260817185222-00-⌔

halter - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

halter (plural halters)

🖼️ ➺

  • A bitless headpiece of rope or straps, placed on the head of animals such as cattle or horses to lead or tie them.
    • ✤ Synonyms: headstall, headpiece, (British) headcollar
  • A rope with a noose, for hanging criminals; the gallows rope.
    • ✤ Synonyms: collar; see also Thesaurus: hangman’s noose
    • ✤ And Crates said, that love was cured with hunger, if not by time; and in him that liked not these two meanes, by the halter [translating hart].1
    • ✤ “[…] No rogue e’er felt the halter draw, with a good opinion of the law, and perhaps my own detestation of the law arises from my having frequently broken it. […].”2
  • A halter top.

Verb

halter (third-person singular simple present halters, present participle haltering, simple past and past participle haltered)

  • (transitive) To place a halter on.
    • ✤ What do you mean, you didn’t halter the horses when we stopped for the night?
    • ✤ The two Indians were finished with their own saddling, the camp gear was packed, and already the extra saddle horses and their one packhorse’ were haltered so they could be led back to the ranch.3

Noun

halter (plural halters)

  • One who halts or limps; a cripple.

Noun

halter (plural halteres)

  • Alternative form of haltere.

Pronunciation

  • (General American) IPA: /ˈhɔltɚ/
  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈhɒltə/, /ˈhɔːltə/
  • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
  • Rhymes: -ɔːltə(ɹ), -ɒltə(ɹ)

Etymology 1

From Middle English halter, helter, helfter, from Old English hælfter, hælftre (“halter”), from Proto-West Germanic ﹡halftrijā (“harness”), from Proto-Indo-European ﹡(s)kelH- (“to cut”), equivalent to half- +‎ -ter.

Cognate with Scots helter (“halter”), Dutch halfter, halster (“halter”), Low German halfter, helchter, halter (“halter”), German Halfter (“halter, holster”).

Etymology 2

From halt + -er.

Etymology 3

Printed 2026-08-17.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 12, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC: ↩

  2. 1913, Robert Barr, chapter 4, in Lord Stranleigh Abroad: ↩

  3. 1981, James Powell, chapter 8, in The Malpais Rider (A Double D Western), Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, →ISBN, page 62: ↩

Link to original

Secondary

• • •