caracole

Borrowed from French caracole (noun, literally “snail's shell”), caracoler (verb).

• IPA^(key): /ˈkæɹəkəʊl/

caracole (plural caracoles)

1. A half-turn performed by a horse and rider in dressage.
2. (cavalry) A combat maneuver where riders of the same squadron turn simultaneously to their left or to their right.
   • 1866, Henry Howard Brownell, “Abraham Lincoln (Summer, 1865)”, in War-Lyrics and Other Poems, Boston: Ticknor and Fields, page 127:

     How the chargers neigh and champ, / (Their riders weary of camp,) / With curvet and with caracole!

3. (architecture) A spiral staircase.

caracole (third-person singular simple present caracoles, present participle caracoling, simple past and past participle caracoled)

1. To execute a caracole.
   • 1819, Walter Scott, Ivanhoe

     Prince John, upon a grey and high-mettled palfrey, caracoled within the lists at the head of his jovial party, laughing loud with his train, and eyeing with all the boldness of royal criticism the beauties who adorned the lofty galleries.

• IPA^(key): /ka.ʁa.kɔl/
• Homophones: caracolent, caracoles

Borrowed from Spanish caracol.

caracole f (plural caracoles)

1. (equestrianism) caracole
2. (architecture) caracole
3. (Belgium) snail

caracole

1. inflection of caracoler:
   1. first- and third-person singular present indicative and subjunctive
   2. second-person singular imperative

• “caracole” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Borrowed from Spanish caracol.

caracole f (plural caracoles)

1. snail