musher

Definition

One who drives a dogsled over ice and snow; specifically, one who participates in a dogsled race.

Etymology

From mush (“to drive dogs, usually pulling a sled, across snow”) + -er (suffix forming agent nouns). Mush is probably derived from French marche or marchons, respectively the second-person singular and first-person plural imperative forms of marcher (“to move; to travel; to walk”), from Proto-Germanic *markōną (“to mark; to notice”), from *marką (“mark; sign; stamp”), possibly related to *markō (“border, boundary; area, region”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *merǵ- (“(noun) border, boundary, edge; (verb) to divide”).

Example Sentences

• "It was a record run. Each day for fourteen days they had averaged forty miles. For three days Perrault and François threw chests up and down the main street of Skaguay and were deluged with invitations to drink, while the team was the constant centre of a worshipful crowd of dog-busters and mushers."
• "The youngest musher to enter was Dallas Seavey, who ran in the 2005 Junior Iditarod at age 17, then turned 18 one day before the Iditarod and ran that race in the same year. […] Dallas Seavey was also the youngest musher to win, taking the 2012 championship at age 25."
• "A sled dog learns that by the time she's hungry, her musher has already prepared a meal; by the time she's tired, she has a warm bed."