A dog with a docked or naturally short tail, or archically, a horse with a docked tail; also refers to a person of short stature.
From Old French 'courtal,' derived from Latin 'curtus' (short). The suffix '-al' indicates 'pertaining to,' so literally means 'short-tailed.'
Docking horse and dog tails was once considered a status symbol in Europe—only the wealthy could afford to mutilate animals, making a 'courtal' a visible badge of nobility, which is why the word appears frequently in heraldic and medieval texts.
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