See one-horse town on Wiktionary
{
"etymology_text": "The term “one-horse” originated as an agricultural phrase, meaning ‘to be drawn/worked by a single horse.’ This led to the use of this phrase in a metaphorical sense as something that is small or insignificant.\nCharles Dickens explained in his publication All the Year Round (1871):\n‘One horse’ is an agricultural phrase, applied to anything small or insignificant, or to any inconsiderable or contemptible person: as a ‘one-horse town,’ a ‘one-horse bank,’ a ‘one-horse hotel,’ a ‘one-horse lawyer’, [etc.]",
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"form": "one-horse towns",
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"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
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"examples": [
{
"text": "It's surrounded by beautiful wilderness, but otherwise it's just a one-horse town.",
"type": "example"
},
{
"ref": "2021 February 16, Dan Richards, “Peak cabin: a fire-spotter's lonely vantage point in Washington state”, in The Guardian:",
"text": "The journey took 48 hours with a stopover in a Bates-style motel in the one-horse town of Marblemount – the last services for 70 wild miles of boscage and bears.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A very small town, especially one of a rural nature and/or offering very few or no attractions."
],
"id": "en-one-horse_town-en-noun-VAUoYahw",
"links": [
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"town"
],
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"rural"
],
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"attractions",
"attractions"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(US, idiomatic) A very small town, especially one of a rural nature and/or offering very few or no attractions."
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "jerkwater town"
},
{
"word": "one-blink town"
},
{
"word": "Podunk"
},
{
"word": "remote place"
}
],
"tags": [
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],
"translations": [
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "very small town",
"word": "kyläpahanen"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "very small town",
"tags": [
"colloquial",
"masculine"
],
"word": "bled paumé"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "very small town",
"tags": [
"neuter"
],
"word": "Kuhdorf"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "zaštatnyj górod",
"sense": "very small town",
"word": "заштатный го́род"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "zaxolustnyj górod",
"sense": "very small town",
"word": "захолустный го́род"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "zaxolústʹje",
"sense": "very small town",
"word": "захолу́стье"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "dyrá",
"sense": "very small town",
"word": "дыра́"
},
{
"code": "es",
"lang": "Spanish",
"sense": "very small town",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "villorrio"
},
{
"code": "sv",
"lang": "Swedish",
"sense": "very small town",
"tags": [
"common-gender"
],
"word": "byhåla"
},
{
"code": "sv",
"lang": "Swedish",
"sense": "very small town",
"tags": [
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"word": "håla"
}
]
}
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"word": "one-horse town"
}
{
"etymology_text": "The term “one-horse” originated as an agricultural phrase, meaning ‘to be drawn/worked by a single horse.’ This led to the use of this phrase in a metaphorical sense as something that is small or insignificant.\nCharles Dickens explained in his publication All the Year Round (1871):\n‘One horse’ is an agricultural phrase, applied to anything small or insignificant, or to any inconsiderable or contemptible person: as a ‘one-horse town,’ a ‘one-horse bank,’ a ‘one-horse hotel,’ a ‘one-horse lawyer’, [etc.]",
"forms": [
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"text": "It's surrounded by beautiful wilderness, but otherwise it's just a one-horse town.",
"type": "example"
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{
"ref": "2021 February 16, Dan Richards, “Peak cabin: a fire-spotter's lonely vantage point in Washington state”, in The Guardian:",
"text": "The journey took 48 hours with a stopover in a Bates-style motel in the one-horse town of Marblemount – the last services for 70 wild miles of boscage and bears.",
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"(US, idiomatic) A very small town, especially one of a rural nature and/or offering very few or no attractions."
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "jerkwater town"
},
{
"word": "one-blink town"
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{
"word": "Podunk"
},
{
"word": "remote place"
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],
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"translations": [
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "very small town",
"word": "kyläpahanen"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "very small town",
"tags": [
"colloquial",
"masculine"
],
"word": "bled paumé"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "very small town",
"tags": [
"neuter"
],
"word": "Kuhdorf"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "zaštatnyj górod",
"sense": "very small town",
"word": "заштатный го́род"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "zaxolustnyj górod",
"sense": "very small town",
"word": "захолустный го́род"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "zaxolústʹje",
"sense": "very small town",
"word": "захолу́стье"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "dyrá",
"sense": "very small town",
"word": "дыра́"
},
{
"code": "es",
"lang": "Spanish",
"sense": "very small town",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "villorrio"
},
{
"code": "sv",
"lang": "Swedish",
"sense": "very small town",
"tags": [
"common-gender"
],
"word": "byhåla"
},
{
"code": "sv",
"lang": "Swedish",
"sense": "very small town",
"tags": [
"common-gender"
],
"word": "håla"
}
],
"word": "one-horse town"
}
Download raw JSONL data for one-horse town meaning in All languages combined (3.7kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-12-21 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-12-04 using wiktextract (d8cb2f3 and 4e554ae). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.