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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

colt.

A young male horse.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/kəʊlt/Received-Pronunciation[kɔʊlt]Received-Pronunciation/kɒlt/Received-Pronunciation/kəwlt/British, Southern, Standard

  1. A young male horse.

  2. A young crane (bird).

  3. A youthful or inexperienced person; a novice.

    figuratively

  4. A youthful or inexperienced person; a novice. A professional cricketer during his first season.

    figuratively · slang

  5. A youthful or inexperienced person; a novice. A person who sits as a juryman for the first time.

    figuratively · obsolete · slang

  6. A short piece of rope once used by petty officers as an instrument of punishment.

    historical

  7. A weapon formed by slinging a small shot to the end of a somewhat stiff piece of rope.

    obsolete · slang

  8. A young camel or donkey.

Where this word comes from

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.

verb/kəʊlt/Received-Pronunciation[kɔʊlt]Received-Pronunciation/kɒlt/Received-Pronunciation/kəwlt/British, Southern, Standard

  1. To horse; to get with young.

    obsolete · transitive

  2. To befool.

    obsolete · transitive

  3. To frisk or frolic like a colt; to act licentiously or wantonly.

    intransitive

  4. 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.

    obsolete · slang · transitive
Where this word comes from

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.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.