Answer: "whoa" or "woah"?

[green_grrl]

Reader carodee wanted to know: Which is the correct spelling: whoa or woah?

I was pretty firmly in the camp of whoa when I got this question. My New Oxford American Dictionary doesn't list woah at all, and under whoa it says:used as a command to a horse to make it stop or slow down

Comments

[barbarianwinter]

Most horses are actually trained to stop at the command "Ho!"

Really? Where, what disciplines? Because I rode for like five years (in the US, east coast, mainly English pleasure/jumper) and I've never even heard of a horse being trained to stop on "Ho!"
Or on any word, really; people said "Whoa" and "Ho" sometimes but that usually wasn't what stopped the horse.

But then I was mainly around school horses, lower level show horses, and privately owned noncompetitive mounts. So maybe that's not what you mean by "serious"?

I'm not saying you're wrong or lying or anything...but I don't think "most" horses, worldwide at all levels and disciplines are trained to stop on one word. I feel like I would have heard of it at some point, all the horse people/books/magazines I was around/reading, if "most" was the cast.

(ETA: Unless you meant "for most modern horses who are trained to stop on command the word is usually "Ho" not "Whoa" which I can't really speak to, not having been around a lot of horses that highly trained. And can't say I'd love fanfic writers getting the idea most horses are trained to stop on command, considering how much bad horsey info there already is in fanfic. That's kinda what it looked like you were saying; sorry if I missed something.)

Anyway, great post--something I've wondered about for a while.

[green_grrl]

Apologies, I worded it poorly. If I were to re-word it: Most horses are not trained to stop solely on a verbal command; they are trained to stop by being reined in, usually also with a deepened seat. However when these physical cues are accompanied by a verbal command, non-riders assume the word is "whoa" although most actual riders use "ho."

(I also rode English pleasure/jumper school horses, although on the west coast of the US, and it was always "ho." As I was researching this article I found several other references to "ho" being the word used in equestrian practice, and I haven't actually heard "whoa" outside of a cowboy movie or dude ranch Western trail ride. But thank you for sharing your experience--"whoa" seems to be more in use than I thought.)