Withers
The withers is the ridge between the shoulder blades of a four-legged mammal. In many species it is the tallest point of the body, and in horses and dogs it is the standard place to measure the animal's height (in contrast, cattle are normally measured to the top of the hips).
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Famous quotes containing the word withers:
“Women’s liberation, if it abolishes the patriarchal family, will abolish a necessary substructure of the authoritarian state, and once that withers away Marx will have come true willy-nilly, so let’s get on with it.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“In the weltering hell of the Moorooroo plain
The Yatala Wangary withers and dies,
And the Worrow Wanilla, demented with pain,
To the Woolgoolga woodlands
Despairingly flies.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“The state is not “abolished,” it withers away.”
—Friedrich Engels (1820–1895)