crupper

From Middle English crupper, crouper, cropere, from Anglo-Norman cruper, cropere, from Old French cropiere, crupiere, from the same Germanic root as croup. Doublet of croupiere.

• IPA^(key): /ˈkɹʌpə/

crupper (plural cruppers)

1. A strap, looped under a horse's tail, used to stop a saddle from slipping.
   • 1663, Hudibras, by Samuel Butler, part 1, canto 1:

     Our knight did bear no less a pack / Of his own buttocks on his back: / Which now had almost got the upper- / Hand of his head, for want of crupper.

   • 1784, Alonzo Fernandez de Avellaneda, A continuation of the history and adventures of the renowned Don Quixote de la Mancha, tr. William Augustus Yardley, The Novelist's Magazine volume 16, page 112:

     he eſpied a mule's crupper, which hung to the ceiling of the room; this he took down, and tendering it to Don Quixote, went on, ſaying...

   • 1877, Anna Sewell, Black Beauty:

     Captain went out in the cab all the morning. Harry came in after school to feed me and give me water. In the afternoon I was put into the cab. Jerry took as much pains to see if the collar and bridle fitted comfortably as if he had been John Manly over again. When the crupper was let out a hole or two it all fitted well. There was no check-rein, no curb, nothing but a plain ring snaffle. What a blessing that was!

   • 1882, Edmondo de Amicis, Morocco: Its People & Places, tr. C. Rollin-Tilton:

     I sought among the mules one with a mild expression of generosity and gentleness in its eyes, and found it in a white mule with a crupper adorned with arabesques.

2. The buttocks or rump, especially of a horse.
3. A piece of armour covering the hindquarters of a horse.

• (The buttocks or rump): croupe

crupper (third-person singular simple present cruppers, present participle cruppering, simple past and past participle cruppered)

1. To fit with a crupper; to place a crupper upon.

   to crupper a horse