I'm sure that everyone but I knows these excellent words, but each one is an absolute novelty to me.
A quadriga is a chariot drawn by four abreast horses. They must have been quite a trick to control. Wide chariot, I guess, or skinny horses. Quadriga racing was the nascar of the classical world. The "ga" in quadriga is from iuga, or yoke, hence the biga, a word of predictable meaning that I would probably have known if I did crossword puzzles or played scrabble. The ancient Greeks called a quadriga a tethrippon, which was their privilege. I haven't encountered the word, but I bet that there's also a triga, and if there is a triga, I imagine that it's linked, somehow or other, to troika.
A cataphract was a heavily-armed horseman. Here's an c. 440 CE Chinese statue of a cataprhact.
I don't believe that horses had legs so stout in those days. I suspect that the medium (terracotta) required them.
Schabraque appeared in my horse book as an English noun, and perhaps it is, but the only definition that I could find was in a French dictionary: nom feminin singulier: 1 ancienne couverture de cheval de cavalerie 2 femme laide ou sotte. I don't have the slightest idea how the two meanings are related, but I'm glad to know them. And the next time that I encounter une femme sotte, which isn't very often, I'm going to try to insinuate "schabraque" into the conversation.
I'll try not to use the word quiff, which is a horse's forelock, especially one hanging over the eyes, but which might easily be misunderstood by guys from my old neighborhood.
And finally, the piaffe is a dressage movement in which a horse essentially trots in place. A ridiculous word for a ridiculous performance. I don't know the origin of the word and I doubt that it's related to French piaf, which, I think I remember, is a demotic or slang word for sparrow.
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