Pastern
WordNet
noun
(1) The part between the fetlock and the hoof
WiktionaryText
Etymology
From pasturon (French pâturon), from pasture ‘shackle’ (from pastoria ‘shackle for pastured animal's foot’) + diminutive suffix.
Noun
- The area on a horse's leg between the fetlock joint and the hoof.
- 1918: It was quite impossible to ride over the deeply-ploughed field; the earth bore only where there was still a little ice, in the thawed furrows the horse's legs sank in above its pasterns. — Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, tr. Louise & Aylmer Maude (Oxford 1998, p. 158)