sb. Also lariette, larriet. [a. Sp. la reata (see REATA).] A rope used for picketing horses or mules; a cord or rope with a noose used in catching wild cattle; the lasso of Mexico and South America.
1835. W. Irving, Tour Prairies, 26. Lariats, or noosed cords, used in catching the wild horse.
1859. Marcy, Prairie Trav., i. 41. Lariats made of hemp are the best.
1861. G. F. Berkeley, Sportsm. W. Prairies, xv. 250. Two mules put so near together that they had got their larriets entangled.
1876. Besant & Rice, Gold. Butterfly (1877), 3. The horsehair lariette, which serves the Western Nimrod for lassoing by day and for keeping off snakes at night.
Hence Lariat v. trans., to secure with a lariat.
1850. B. Taylor, Eldorado, xi. (1862), 104. My mules had already been caught and lariated.
