R

Compound forms include: race-card-first attestation 1851, see card; race-cloth, another term for weight-cloth; racecourse, first attested in 1764, and now in competition with the American form racetrack - an earlier term, now obsolete, but common in the eighteenth century, was race-ground; race-goer, 'a frequenter of race meetings', first attested, as racegoing, in 1848; race-reader, which originally meant, according to the OED, 'one who forecasts the performances of horses in a given race', but the examples it gives really describe one who expertly observes the running of horses in a race - its more common sense now is that of a race commentator, at the course or on radio or television, or to describe those who contribute to form guides: see read. The most important compound is racehorse, first attested in Thomas Middleton's play Women Beware Women (1626). Its first use as a single word, rather than race-horse or race horse, occurs in the nineteenth century. The earliest references to racehorses, in the ninth century, describe them as running horses; and Gervase Markham's pioneering account, in 1599, is titled 'How to Choose, Ride, Traine, and Diet both Hunting-horses and Running-horses'. The Rutland Papers at Belvoir Castle record the following entry for 1549: 'Paid, the first of November, at Barwyke to Sir Fraunces Leyke, Knyght,

for iii yardes of sattyn at xs, the yard, wych my Lord lost in wager of horse runnynge, xxxs.' Running horse was still in use as late as 1777.