See one-horse town in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
Download JSON data for one-horse town meaning in English (3.5kB)
{
"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": [
{
"form": "one-horse towns",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"head": "one-horse town"
},
"expansion": "one-horse town (plural one-horse towns)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "American English",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
"Entries with incorrect language header",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
}
],
"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": "quotation"
}
],
"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": [
[
"small",
"small"
],
[
"town",
"town"
],
[
"rural",
"rural"
],
[
"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": [
"US",
"idiomatic"
],
"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"
}
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "En-au-one-horse town.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/b/bb/En-au-one-horse_town.ogg/En-au-one-horse_town.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/En-au-one-horse_town.ogg",
"tags": [
"Australia"
],
"text": "Audio (AU)"
}
],
"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": [
{
"form": "one-horse towns",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"head": "one-horse town"
},
"expansion": "one-horse town (plural one-horse towns)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"American English",
"English countable nouns",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English idioms",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English nouns",
"English terms with audio links",
"English terms with quotations",
"English terms with usage examples"
],
"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": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A very small town, especially one of a rural nature and/or offering very few or no attractions."
],
"links": [
[
"small",
"small"
],
[
"town",
"town"
],
[
"rural",
"rural"
],
[
"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": [
"US",
"idiomatic"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "En-au-one-horse town.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/b/bb/En-au-one-horse_town.ogg/En-au-one-horse_town.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/En-au-one-horse_town.ogg",
"tags": [
"Australia"
],
"text": "Audio (AU)"
}
],
"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"
}
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). 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.
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