"Houyhnhnms"

       As I noted in the last post, my essay on "Yahoo" pointed out that the "noble creatures Swift created to live by right reason alone were horses.  They called themselves Houyhnhnms.  Swift has Gulliver say,

        'The word Houyhnhnm, in their tongue, signifies a horse, and in its etymology, the perfection of nature.'"

I love Swift 's choice of the word to identify these creatures. If you try to give voice to the word Houyhnhnm, you can see how Swift came up with it.
   
       It's a pretty good imitation of what we ordinarily call a "whinny."