See stalking horse in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
Download JSON data for stalking horse meaning in English (5.4kB)
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "stalking horses",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {},
"expansion": "stalking horse (plural stalking horses)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "topical",
"langcode": "en",
"name": "Hunting",
"orig": "en:Hunting",
"parents": [
"Human activity",
"Human behaviour",
"Human",
"All topics",
"Fundamental"
],
"source": "w"
},
{
"_dis": "46 26 29",
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
"Entries with incorrect language header",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w+disamb"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A horse used as cover by a hunter stalking game."
],
"id": "en-stalking_horse-en-noun-M7~MScDp",
"links": [
[
"hunting",
"hunting#Noun"
],
[
"cover",
"cover"
],
[
"hunter",
"hunter"
],
[
"game",
"game"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(dated, hunting) A horse used as cover by a hunter stalking game."
],
"related": [
{
"_dis1": "78 10 12",
"word": "Trojan horse"
}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"_dis1": "75 11 13",
"word": "stalking-horse"
}
],
"tags": [
"dated"
],
"topics": [
"hobbies",
"hunting",
"lifestyle"
],
"translations": [
{
"_dis1": "93 1 6",
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "zaslónnaja lóšadʹ",
"sense": "a horse used as cover by a hunter stalking game",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "засло́нная ло́шадь"
},
{
"_dis1": "93 1 6",
"code": "sv",
"lang": "Swedish",
"sense": "a horse used as cover by a hunter stalking game",
"tags": [
"common-gender"
],
"word": "skjuthäst"
}
]
},
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "topical",
"langcode": "en",
"name": "Politics",
"orig": "en:Politics",
"parents": [
"Society",
"All topics",
"Fundamental"
],
"source": "w"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1842, Honoré de Balzac, chapter 8, in Ellen Marriage, transl., Albert Savarus",
"text": "The Ministry had their candidate, a stalking-horse, useful only to receive the purely Ministerial votes. The votes, thus divided, gave no result.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2008 May 23, James Graff, “Lost: Labour's Love for Brown”, in Time, archived from the original on 2016-03-07",
"text": "Any open challenge would likely come first as trial balloons from backbench \"stalking horse\" candidates, who could never win.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2020 October 20, Ross Douthat, “Trump Is Giving Up”, in New York Times",
"text": "But the other narrative goes after Biden as though the Democrats had actually nominated Bernie Sanders, insisting that his advancing age makes him a decrepit vessel for the radical left, a stalking horse not just for Kamala Harris but also for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and antifa.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A candidate put forward to serve a hidden, ulterior purpose in a political campaign, such as testing the field for another potential candidate by gauging voter sentiment or covertly helping another candidate by attracting voters away from a third candidate."
],
"id": "en-stalking_horse-en-noun-vmQ-oZam",
"links": [
[
"politics",
"politics"
],
[
"candidate",
"candidate"
],
[
"ulterior",
"ulterior"
],
[
"potential",
"potential"
],
[
"gauging",
"gauge"
],
[
"sentiment",
"sentiment"
],
[
"covert",
"covert"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic, politics) A candidate put forward to serve a hidden, ulterior purpose in a political campaign, such as testing the field for another potential candidate by gauging voter sentiment or covertly helping another candidate by attracting voters away from a third candidate."
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
],
"topics": [
"government",
"politics"
]
},
{
"categories": [],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1694, William Congreve, The Double-Dealer, act 2, scene 4",
"text": "Do you think my daughter […] fit for nothing but to be a stalking horse, to stand before you, while you take aim at my wife?",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1833, James Fenimore Cooper, chapter 29, in The Headsman",
"text": "\"Let the great of the earth give but half the care to prevent, that they show to punish, offences against themselves, and what is now called justice will no longer be a stalking-horse to enable a few to live at the cost of the rest.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1992 May 25, “One for The Loggers”, in Time, archived from the original on 2014-08-04",
"text": "Environmentalists have used the owl as a stalking horse to save the last 10% of old-growth forest in the Northwest.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2008 August 27, Kirk Johnson, Eric Lichtblau, “Officials See No ‘Credible Threat’ to Obama in Racist Rants”, in New York Times",
"text": "The post, culling online chatter from supremacist sites, said hate groups were increasingly worried that law enforcement authorities would use Mr. Obama’s candidacy as a stalking horse to justify a government clampdown.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A person, thing, or expedient used in a deceptive manner, to achieve some hidden purpose."
],
"id": "en-stalking_horse-en-noun-SQ~LZyUp",
"links": [
[
"expedient",
"expedient"
],
[
"deceptive",
"deceptive"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic, by extension) A person, thing, or expedient used in a deceptive manner, to achieve some hidden purpose."
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "pretext"
},
{
"word": "ruse"
}
],
"tags": [
"broadly",
"idiomatic"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "En-au-stalking horse.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/3/3e/En-au-stalking_horse.ogg/En-au-stalking_horse.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/En-au-stalking_horse.ogg",
"tags": [
"Australia"
],
"text": "Audio (AU)"
}
],
"word": "stalking horse"
}
{
"categories": [
"English countable nouns",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English nouns",
"English terms with audio links"
],
"forms": [
{
"form": "stalking horses",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {},
"expansion": "stalking horse (plural stalking horses)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"related": [
{
"word": "Trojan horse"
}
],
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English dated terms",
"en:Hunting"
],
"glosses": [
"A horse used as cover by a hunter stalking game."
],
"links": [
[
"hunting",
"hunting#Noun"
],
[
"cover",
"cover"
],
[
"hunter",
"hunter"
],
[
"game",
"game"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(dated, hunting) A horse used as cover by a hunter stalking game."
],
"tags": [
"dated"
],
"topics": [
"hobbies",
"hunting",
"lifestyle"
]
},
{
"categories": [
"English idioms",
"English terms with quotations",
"en:Politics"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1842, Honoré de Balzac, chapter 8, in Ellen Marriage, transl., Albert Savarus",
"text": "The Ministry had their candidate, a stalking-horse, useful only to receive the purely Ministerial votes. The votes, thus divided, gave no result.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2008 May 23, James Graff, “Lost: Labour's Love for Brown”, in Time, archived from the original on 2016-03-07",
"text": "Any open challenge would likely come first as trial balloons from backbench \"stalking horse\" candidates, who could never win.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2020 October 20, Ross Douthat, “Trump Is Giving Up”, in New York Times",
"text": "But the other narrative goes after Biden as though the Democrats had actually nominated Bernie Sanders, insisting that his advancing age makes him a decrepit vessel for the radical left, a stalking horse not just for Kamala Harris but also for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and antifa.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A candidate put forward to serve a hidden, ulterior purpose in a political campaign, such as testing the field for another potential candidate by gauging voter sentiment or covertly helping another candidate by attracting voters away from a third candidate."
],
"links": [
[
"politics",
"politics"
],
[
"candidate",
"candidate"
],
[
"ulterior",
"ulterior"
],
[
"potential",
"potential"
],
[
"gauging",
"gauge"
],
[
"sentiment",
"sentiment"
],
[
"covert",
"covert"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic, politics) A candidate put forward to serve a hidden, ulterior purpose in a political campaign, such as testing the field for another potential candidate by gauging voter sentiment or covertly helping another candidate by attracting voters away from a third candidate."
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
],
"topics": [
"government",
"politics"
]
},
{
"categories": [
"English idioms",
"English terms with quotations"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1694, William Congreve, The Double-Dealer, act 2, scene 4",
"text": "Do you think my daughter […] fit for nothing but to be a stalking horse, to stand before you, while you take aim at my wife?",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1833, James Fenimore Cooper, chapter 29, in The Headsman",
"text": "\"Let the great of the earth give but half the care to prevent, that they show to punish, offences against themselves, and what is now called justice will no longer be a stalking-horse to enable a few to live at the cost of the rest.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1992 May 25, “One for The Loggers”, in Time, archived from the original on 2014-08-04",
"text": "Environmentalists have used the owl as a stalking horse to save the last 10% of old-growth forest in the Northwest.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2008 August 27, Kirk Johnson, Eric Lichtblau, “Officials See No ‘Credible Threat’ to Obama in Racist Rants”, in New York Times",
"text": "The post, culling online chatter from supremacist sites, said hate groups were increasingly worried that law enforcement authorities would use Mr. Obama’s candidacy as a stalking horse to justify a government clampdown.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A person, thing, or expedient used in a deceptive manner, to achieve some hidden purpose."
],
"links": [
[
"expedient",
"expedient"
],
[
"deceptive",
"deceptive"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic, by extension) A person, thing, or expedient used in a deceptive manner, to achieve some hidden purpose."
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "pretext"
},
{
"word": "ruse"
}
],
"tags": [
"broadly",
"idiomatic"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "En-au-stalking horse.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/3/3e/En-au-stalking_horse.ogg/En-au-stalking_horse.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/En-au-stalking_horse.ogg",
"tags": [
"Australia"
],
"text": "Audio (AU)"
}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "stalking-horse"
}
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "zaslónnaja lóšadʹ",
"sense": "a horse used as cover by a hunter stalking game",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "засло́нная ло́шадь"
},
{
"code": "sv",
"lang": "Swedish",
"sense": "a horse used as cover by a hunter stalking game",
"tags": [
"common-gender"
],
"word": "skjuthäst"
}
],
"word": "stalking horse"
}
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-06 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 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.
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.