piaffe

plural piaffes

1. dressageA calm, composed, elevated trot in place.

present singular third person piaffes · participle present piaffing · participle past piaffed · past piaffed

1. archaicrareTo strut pretentiously, to parade about.

   Which loue you must know was ingendered in the sweet soile of Fraunce, where I piaffed like a bon companion, with a steele at my girdle, till the Friars (a canker of the curssed Covent) fell to drawing of naked knives, and kild indeed the good kind Henrie of Fraunce, the more was the pittie.

   1593, John Eliot, Ortho-epia Gallica: Eliots fruits for the French, Scolar P., published 1968, page A3

2. To trot a horse with a high, slow, step, lifting the feet but without moving forward significantly.

   To piaffe in backing is rather too much to be expected in the hurry which [etc.].

   1761 (1778), James A. H. Murray, editor, A new English dictionary on historical principles: founded mainly on the materials collected by the Philological Society, Volume 7, Part 2, Oxford: Clarendon Press, translation of Mil. Equitation by Earl of Pembroke, published 1905, page 813

3. To ride a horse in this way.

   Accordingly he piaffed away in high spirits and confidence to the head of Fergus's regiment, although understanding not a word of Gaelic, and very little English.

   1814, Sir Walter Scott, edited by Peter Garside, Waverley, volume 1 of Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels, Edinburgh University Press, published 2008, page 289