In English, a horse wears a 'horse shoe', or 'shoe for horse'. In French, a horse wears a 'fer à cheval', or 'iron for horse', while German horses are shod with a 'Hufeisen' or 'hoof iron'.
All these signs are motivated: English and French see a relationship between the animal as a whole and the protecting device, while German relates the protecting device to the relevant body part of the horse.
Moreover, French and German highlight the material the protecting device is made of, whereas English, by using shoe, takes an anthropocentric view of the scene.
Isn't language construal fascinating?
*This piece of knowledge comes courtesy of an extract in my linguistics textbook: Dirven & Verspoor (1998: 14-15) cited in Hendrikse et al. 2008. Approaches in Linguistics University of South Africa: Pretoria
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