jog trot

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for August 18, 2015 is: jog trot • \JAHG-TRAHT\  • noun 1 : a horse's slow measured trot 2 : a routine habit or course of action Examples: The weekly Friday-night dances provided the townsfolk with a few hours of respite from the jog trot of life. "The speed of the trot can vary between the very slow jog trot at less than four miles per hour to the very fast racing trot of the Standardbred, at well over fifteen miles per hour." - Lee Ziegler, Easy-Gaited Horses, 2005 Did you know? The jog trot is a type of gait that is sometimes required at horse shows. It appears to have been so named because the horse's often jolting movement is certainly "jogging," and the gait itself is actually a kind of careful, deliberate trot. The term first appeared in print in 1796 and rapidly came to be used in a figurative sense as well, referring to a steady and usually monotonous routine, similar to the slow, regular pace of a horse at a jog trot. There is a suggestion with the generalized sense that the action is uniform and unhurried, and perhaps even a little dull. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.