The one-horse shay is a light, covered, two-wheeled carriage for two persons, drawn by a single horse. The body is chairlike in shape and has one seat for passengers positioned above the axle which is hung by leather braces from wooden springs connected to the shafts. The one-horse shay is an American adaptation, originating in

Union, Maine Union is a town in Knox County, Maine, United States. The population was 2,383 at the 2020 census. It is home to the Matthews Museum of Maine Heritage and annual Union Fair. History Union was part of a tract of land called the Muscongus Pate ...

, of the French ''

chaise A one-horse chaise A three-wheeled "Handchaise", Germany, around 1900, designed to be pushed by a person A chaise, sometimes called chay or shay, is a light two- or four-wheeled traveling or pleasure carriage for one or two people with a folding ...

''. The one-horse shay is colloquially known in the US as a 'one-hoss shay'.

Etymology

The English word ''shay'' is a back-formation from the French word ''chaise'' with the /z/ of that word taken as the plural ending -s. This is but one example of mistaking foreign singular words as if being English plurals; other examples include ''pea'', ''cherry'' and ''sherry''.

Whiskey variant

A smaller and more lightly constructed version of the one-horse shay is called a chair or 'whiskey' because it can "whisk" around other carriages and pass them quickly.

Shay in literature

American writer

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (; August 29, 1809 – October 7, 1894) was an American physician, poet, and polymath based in Boston. Grouped among the fireside poets, he was acclaimed by his peers as one of the best writers of the day. His most fa ...

memorialized the shay in his satirical poem " ''or'' The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay". In the poem, a fictional deacon crafts the titular wonderful one-hoss shay in such a logical way that it could not break down. The shay is constructed from the very best of materials so that each part is as strong as every other part. In Holmes' humorous, yet "logical", twist, the shay endures for a hundred years (amazingly to the precise moment of the 100th anniversary of the Lisbon earthquake shock) then it "went to pieces all at once, and nothing first, — just as bubbles do when they burst". It was built in such a "logical way" that it ran for exactly one hundred years to the day.

Shay in economics

In economics, the term "one-hoss shay" is used, following the scenario in Holmes' poem, to describe a model of

depreciation In accountancy, depreciation is a term that refers to two aspects of the same concept: first, the actual decrease of fair value of an asset, such as the decrease in value of factory equipment each year as it is used and wear, and second, the ...

, in which a durable product delivers the same services throughout its lifetime before failing with zero scrap value. A chair is a common example of such a product.

References

External links