If you're talking about horses, "founder" will mean to stumble or go lame, but that is a usage reserved to refer specifically to horses.
Actually, no. Founder is the common name for laminitis, a specific and serious condition in horses where a systemic shock triggers a raised temperature in the hooves (or less commonly in a single hoof), causing tissue damage. The condition can lead to death, or with enough time the horse can recover, but will retain tell-tale scar tissue on the hoof for a year or more past the end of the illness itself.
The term would not be used for stumbling, or for any lameness other than that related directly to laminitis.
Ah. I got the definition at dictionary.com here, and it looks to me like there are actually two different uses for the word "founder" when applied to horses (specifically definitions 4 vs. 6 under the verb form of "founder"). Of course dictionary.com isn't all-knowing so that could be an error on its part.
Well, dictionary.com is definitely, positively, beyond a shadow of a doubt wrong, because the word "founder" carries the weight of blind panic among horse people. It's a worse case scenario situation. Referring to a stumble as "foundering" would be about the same as referring to a sneeze as cancer, if cancer were to have a verb form, which I'm realizing it does not, therefore spoiling my analogy. But yeah, dictionary.com is very wrong in this.
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Actually, no. Founder is the common name for laminitis, a specific and serious condition in horses where a systemic shock triggers a raised temperature in the hooves (or less commonly in a single hoof), causing tissue damage. The condition can lead to death, or with enough time the horse can recover, but will retain tell-tale scar tissue on the hoof for a year or more past the end of the illness itself.
The term would not be used for stumbling, or for any lameness other than that related directly to laminitis.
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This sentence cracked me up and I can't even tell you why exactly! *gigglesnort*
Otherwise nice entry, since I didn't know about the verb founder.
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