horse blanket

plural horse blankets

1. A blanket placed underneath the saddle of a horse.

   They used to take a big horse-blanket and sit on the grass a little to the left of the lower end, where there is a dip in the ground, and where the occupied graves stop short and the ready-made ones are not ready.

   1889, Rudyard Kipling, “At the Pit's Mouth”, in Under the Deodars, Boston: The Greenock Press, published 1899, page 52

2. A blanket worn by a horse (saddled or unsaddled) in cold weather.
3. UShistoricalslanghobbiesPaper money consisting of large-sized notes or bills, printed from 1861 to 1928.

   https://web.archive.org/web/20070409012812/http://www.brokencc.com/buyfaq1.php Typically your small size (the same physical size as regular money, as opposed to the old horse blankets) silver certificate is worth about 5% more than face.

   2 more examples

   And then he had those great big, what they used to call "horse blankets." You know those bills? Yeah, that's what the young man gave him.

   1986, William Schneider, Moses Cruikshank, The Life I've Been Living

   Right now, I am teaching my daughter about "horse blankets" and that "money used to be this big". Who knows? Maybe she will tell her kids how she can remember when dollars didn't have holes for the blind...

   2006: BooBooBillQueen, Treasury ordered to make bills recognizable to blind people on Collectors Universe Forums http://forums.collectors.com/messageview.cfm?catid=23&threadid=553831&STARTPAGE=1