Also splint bone, 9 splent bone. [SPLINT sb. 5, 10.]
1. Farriery. † a. = SPLINT sb. 5. Obs. b. One or other of the two small metacarpal bones of the foreleg of a horse, lying behind and in close contact with the cannon-bone or shank.
1704. Lond. Gaz., No. 4027/4. A Splint Bone in the inside of her near fore Leg.
1831. Youatt, Horse, 64. The larger metacarpal or cannon or shank in front, the smaller metacarpal or splent bone behind.
1854. Owen, in Orr’s Circ. Sci., Org. Nat., I. 244. The small bone called ‘splint bone,’ by veterinarians, articulated to the ‘mesocuneiform, is the stunted metatarsal of the second toe…; the outer ‘splint-bone,’ articulated to the ‘cuboides,’ is the similarly stunted metatarsal of the fourth toe.
1881. G. J. Romanes, in Fortn. Rev., Dec., 751. But on each side of this enlarged toe there are, beneath the skin, rudimentary bones of two other toes, the so-called splint-bones.
2. Anat. = FIBULA 2.
1859. in Mayne, Expos. Lex.
