Riding

Riding has a vocabulary older than most sports and it moves in two directions at once: half of it describes the horse and half of it describes what the rider does about it. The sixth entry, el ritmo constante del aire, carries the word this list turns on. El aire is the air one breathes — and it is also, in Spanish, the name for a way of moving: el paso, el trote and el galope are los tres aires, and cambiar de aire on horseback means changing gait. It reaches beyond the stable. Anda con un aire muy suyo says somebody walks in an unmistakable way, and se da un aire a su hermano says she looks a little like her brother. English splits the job four ways — « air », « gait », « bearing », « resemblance » — and only the dressage term « airs above the ground » still remembers that they were once the same thing.