caracole

plural caracoles · alternative caracol

1. A half-turn performed by a horse and rider in dressage.
2. historicalcavalryA combat maneuver where riders of the same squadron turn simultaneously to their left or to their right.

   The caracole played a role well into the Thirty Years' War.

   1975, Hans Delbrück, History of the Art of War Within the Framework of Political History, Volume 4, Greenwood Press, page 124

   2 more examples

   How the chargers neigh and champ, / (Their riders weary of camp,) / With curvet and with caracole!

   1866, Henry Howard Brownell, “Abraham Lincoln (Summer, 1865)”, in War-Lyrics and Other Poems, Boston: Ticknor and Fields, page 127

   The battle tactic of these cavalry was called the caracole, an attack with pistols. There were four main varieties which may be called the simple caracole, the true caracole, the limacon, and the Protestant caracole.

   2001, William P. Guthrie, Battles of the Thirty Years War, Bloomsbury Academic, page 12

3. architectureA spiral staircase.

present singular third person caracoles · participle present caracoling · participle past caracoled · past caracoled · alternative caracol

1. To execute a caracole.

   2010, Peter H. Wilson (translator and editor), The Thirty Years War: A Sourcebook, Macmillan Publishers (Palgrave Macmillan), page 67, The proper way, which I often explained to them, was too reject the bad habit of caracolling when facing the enemy.

   4 more examples

   Prince John, upon a grey and high-mettled palfrey, caracoled within the lists at the head of his jovial party, laughing loud with his train, and eyeing with all the boldness of royal criticism the beauties who adorned the lofty galleries.

   1819, Walter Scott, Ivanhoe

   1884, Robert Black (translator), François Guizot, Henriette Elizabeth Guizot de Witt, The History of France from the Earliest Times to 1848, Volume 1, John B. Alden, page 259, Finally he went out of church and caracoled about on the open, at the foot of the castle, in presence of the people eager to have their share in the spectacle.

   […]the noble bishop caracolled in the presence, on a well-trained war-horse, which the right reverend father in God bestrode in a lay habit of purple, jack-boots, his hat cocked, and his black wig tied up behind in true military fashion.

   1877, John Doran, London in the Jacobite Times, Volume 1, Richard Bentley & Son, page 364

   Sir Charles Oman's book mentions no instance where caracoling cavalry succeeded unaided in breaking a resolute body of infantry standing firm to receive them.

   1937, The Cavalry Journal, Volume 27, page 601