The metaphorical use of equestrian vocabulary is a vivid reflection of cultural history, social psychology, and worldviews embedded in both English and Uzbek societies. This article explores the nature, structure, and semantics of metaphorical expressions relating to equestrianism in these two languages. By employing both cognitive-linguistic and comparative-cultural approaches, the study reveals similarities and divergences in the conceptualization of the horse as a metaphorical source domain. Corpus-based evidence, literary analysis, and ethnolinguistic data are integrated to elucidate how metaphorical language drawn from the equestrian sphere functions within wider discourses of power, speed, nobility, unpredictability, and social order. The research demonstrates that, while both English and Uzbek employ equestrian metaphors to articulate core human experiences, the specific mappings and lexical realizations reflect unique sociocultural trajectories. The article concludes with implications for bilingual lexicography, cross-cultural communication, and metaphor studies.

Equestrian metaphors, comparative linguistics, cognitive metaphor

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