WITHERS

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does withers mean? 

• WITHERS (noun)
  The noun WITHERS has 1 sense:

1. the highest part of the back at the base of the neck of various animals especially draft animals

  Familiarity information: WITHERS used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• WITHERS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The highest part of the back at the base of the neck of various animals especially draft animals

Classified under:

Nouns denoting animals

Hypernyms ("withers" is a kind of...):

body part (any part of an organism such as an organ or extremity)

Holonyms ("withers" is a part of...):

Equus caballus; horse (solid-hoofed herbivorous quadruped domesticated since prehistoric times)

ox (an adult castrated bull of the genus Bos; especially Bos taurus)

sheep (woolly usually horned ruminant mammal related to the goat)

cervid; deer (distinguished from Bovidae by the male's having solid deciduous antlers)

 Context examples 

Topline slopes upward from the withers to the loin.

(Old English Sheepdog, NCI Thesaurus)

Fashion and speech and manners may change, but the spirit of enterprise within that square mile or two of land must not change, for when it withers all that has grown from it must wither also.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)