1 [C,usually pl.] a long, narrow, leather band that is fastened around a horse's neck and is held by the rider in order to control the horse:
She pulled gently on the reins.
2 (reins) [pl.] (BrE) straps worn by a small child and held by an adult in order to stop the child from walking off and getting lost
3 (the reins) [pl.] the state of being in control or the leader of sth:
It was time to hand over the reins of power (= to give control to sb else). * The vice-president was forced to take up the reins of office.
IDIOMS
give / allow sb/sth free / full rein
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for rein is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is rein a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, rein is tagged as noun.
Does rein appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — rein appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
