English edit

Etymology edit

thorough +‎ paced

Adjective edit

thoroughpaced (comparative more thoroughpaced, superlative most thoroughpaced)

  1. (of a horse) Trained in every pace.
    • 1859, Elizabeth Caroline Grey, The Old Country House, Routledge, Warne, & Routledge (1859), page 55:
      I, who found it hard matter to keep up my less thoroughpaced steed with the speed of her perfect little Pegasus, []
  2. Extensively trained or schooled; knowledgeable; proficient.
    • 1751, [Tobias] Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle [], volumes (please specify |volume=I to IV), London: Harrison and Co., [], →OCLC:
      [T]he terrors of superior authority were plainly perceivable in his features, and in less than three months he became a thorough-paced husband.
    • 1800, Anonymous, "Account of the Author", in Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, J. Cundee (1800), page xvi:
      Wood's character of him is, that — "he was an exact mathematician, a curious calculator of nativities, a general read scholar, a thorough-paced philologist, and one that understood the surveying of lands well. []
  3. Complete, total.
    • 1892, Leslie Stephen, Hours in a Library, Volume I, Smith, Elder, & Co., page 87:
      The improbability of a thoroughpaced scoundrel writing daily elaborate confessions of his criminality to a friend, even when the friend condemns him, expatiating upon atrocities that deserved hanging, and justifying his vices on principle, is rather too glaring to be admissible.
    • 1901, Henry A. Beers, A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century[1], Henry Holt and Company, page 349:
      [] but Swinburne was perhaps the first thoroughpaced disciple of the French romantic school.
    • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:thoroughpaced.