Meaning

noun stable gear consisting of either of two curved supports that are attached to the collar of a draft horse and that hold the traces

originFrom Middle English hame, from Middle Dutch hame (“horse collar, harness, fishnet”), from Old Dutch *hamo, from Frankish *hamō, from Proto-Germanic *hamô (“fishnet, collar for a horse”), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱom- (“part of a harness”). Cognate with Middle Low German ham, hame (“collar, fishnet”), Old High German hamo (“sack-like fishnet”) (Modern German dialectal Hame, Hamen (“hand…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0