The Collaborative International Dictionary
four-in-hand \four-in-hand\ n.
A long necktie that is tied in a slipknot with one end hanging in front of the other.
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a coach pulled by four horses with one driver.
Syn: coach, coach-and-four.
Wiktionary
n. A carriage drawn by four horses controlled by one driver; a coach-and-four.
WordNet
n. a long necktie that is tied in a slipknot with one end hanging in front of the other
a carriage pulled by four horses with one driver [syn: coach, coach-and-four]
Wikipedia
A four-in-hand is a carriage drawn by a team of four horses having the reins rigged in such a way that it can be driven by a single driver. The stagecoach and the tally-ho are usually four-in-hand coaches.
Before the four-in-hand rigging was developed, two drivers were needed to handle four horses. However, with a four-in-hand, the solo driver could handle all four horses by holding all the reins in one hand, thus the name.
The four-in-hand knot used to tie neckwear may have developed from a knot used in the rigging of the reins.
Today Four-in-hand driving is the top discipline of combined driving in sports. One of its major events is the FEI World Cup Driving series.
Usage examples of "four-in-hand".
Next morning they resumed their journey, and halted one night more before they reached Tepellene, in approaching which they met a carriage, not inelegantly constructed after the German fashion, with a man on the box driving four-in-hand, and two Albanian soldiers standing on the footboard behind.
Duly next morning the rosy-fingered Aurora drew the gold and crimson curtains of the east, and the splendid Apollo, stepping forth from his chamber, took the reins of his unrivalled team, and driving four-in-hand through the sky, like a great swell as he is, took small note of the staring hucksters and publicans by the road-side, and sublimely overlooked the footsore and ragged pedestrians that crawl below his level.
Some sparkling summer morning, if you chanced to drive four-in-hand along the broad beach at Santa Barbara, inhaling, the spicy breeze from the Sandwich Islands, along the curved shore where the blue of the sea and the purple of the mountains remind you of the Sorrentine promontory, and then dashed away into the canon of Montecito, among the vineyards and orange orchards and live-oaks and palms, in vales and hills all ablaze with roses and flowers of the garden and the hothouse, which bloom the year round in the gracious seaair, would you not, we wonder, come to yourselves in the sense of a new life where it is good form to be enthusiastic and not disgraceful to be surprised?
Boxing, rat-hunting, the fives court, and four-in-hand driving were then the fashion of our British aristocracy.
In his youth his taste had run to loud ties, but now it seemed to have faded, like his vitality, and was expressed in pale-lilac four-in-hands and indeterminate gray collars.
No, to be sure,' said Blaine, who had seen Diana driving a four-in-hand along the Stockbridge road and outgalloping the Salisbury Flyer itself, to the cheers of the passengers aboard, and who knew that Clarissa had been sent to Botany Bay for blowing a man's head off with a double-barrelled fowling-piece.
Rube was sitting in a wooden rocker, and he looked great: His suit had four buttons and high tiny lapels, and he wore a stand-up wing collar and a four-in-hand black tie with a gold stickpin.