Ride , n.
1. The act
of riding; an excursion on horseback or in a vehicle.
2. A saddle horse. [Prov. Eng.]
Wright.
3. A road or avenue cut in
a wood, or through grounds, to be used as a place for riding; a riding.
Ride , v. t. 1. To
sit on, so as to be carried;
as, to ride a horse; to ride a bicycle.
[They] rend up both rocks and hills, and ride the air
In whirlwind.
Milton.
2. To manage insolently at will; to domineer over.
The nobility
could no longer endure to be ridden by bakers, cobblers, and brewers.
Swift. 3. To convey, as
by riding; to make or do by riding.
Tue only men
that safe can ride
Mine errands on the Scottish side.
Sir W. Scott. 4. (Surg.)
To overlap (each other); -- said of bones or
fractured fragments.
To ride a hobby, to have some favorite occupation or subject of
talk. -- To ride and tie, to take turn with another in labor and
rest; -- from the expedient adopted by two persons with one horse, one of whom
rides the animal a certain distance, and then ties him for the use of the other,
who is coming up on
foot. Fielding.
-- To ride down. (a) To ride over;
to trample down in riding; to overthrow by riding against; as, to ride
down an enemy. (b)
(Naut.) To bear down, as on a halyard when hoisting a sail. -- To ride out (Naut.), to keep safe
afloat during (a storm) while riding at anchor or
when hove to on the open sea; as,
to ride out the gale.
Ride (rīd),
v. i. [imp. Rode (rōd) (Rid [r&ibreve;d]
, archaic); p. p. Ridden (&?;) (Rid, archaic); p. pr. & vb. n. Riding (&?;).]
[AS. rīdan; akin to LG. riden, D. rijden, G. reiten, OHG.
rītan, Icel. rīða, Sw. rida, Dan. ride; cf. L. raeda a carriage, which is from a Celtic word. Cf. Road.] 1. To be carried on
the back of
an animal, as a horse.
To-morrow, when ye riden by the way.
Chaucer. Let your master ride on before, and do you gallop
after him.
Swift. 2. To be borne in a carriage; as, to ride in a coach, in a car, and the like.
See Synonym, below.
The richest inhabitants exhibited their wealth, not by riding in gilden carriages, but by walking the streets with trains of servants.
Macaulay.
3. To be borne or in a fluid; to float; to lie.
Men once walked where ships at anchor ride.
Dryden.
4. To be
supported in motion; to rest.
Strong as the
exletree
On which heaven rides.
Shak.
On whose foolish honesty
My practices ride easy!
Shak.
5. To manage a horse, as an equestrian.
He rode, he fenced, he moved with graceful ease.
Dryden.
6. To support a rider, as a horse; to move under the saddle; as, a horse
rides easy or hard, slow or
fast.
To ride easy (Naut.),
to lie at
anchor without violent pitching or straining at the cables. -- To ride hard (Naut.), to pitch violently. --
To ride out. (a) To go upon a military expedition. [Obs.] Chaucer. (b) To ride in the open air. [Colloq.] -- To ride to
hounds, to ride behind, and near to, the
hounds in hunting.
Syn. -- Drive. --
Ride, Drive.
Ride originally meant (and is
so used throughout the English Bible) to be
carried on horseback or in a vehicle of any kind. At present in England, drive is the word applied in most cases to
progress in a carriage; as, a drive around the park, etc.; while ride is appropriated to progress on a
horse. Johnson seems to sanction this distinction by giving "to travel on horseback" as the leading sense of ride; though he adds "to travel in a
vehicle" as a secondary sense. This latter use of
the word still occurs to some extent; as, the queen
rides to Parliament
in her coach of state; to ride in an
omnibus.
"Will you ride over or drive?" said Lord Willowby to his quest,
after breakfast that morning.
W. Black.
Hear it pronounced