Home North American English workhorse

Definition of workhorse in US English:

workhorse

noun

1A horse used for work on a farm.
- ‘We experimented with teams of Percheron and Belgian workhorses.’
- ‘They are workhorses and the one I chose is both affordable and powerful.’
- ‘They tend to be more workhorses than show horses.’
- ‘As machinery began to overtake the use of workhorses, the Black Forest horse became endangered.’
- ‘Edmund kept two horses for himself, but the rest were workhorses for the land or pulling carriages.’
- ‘After 26 years of horse power, we sold our six workhorses (yes, we were guilty of ‘get bigger or get out’), completing our switch to using hand power.’
1. 1.1 A person or machine that dependably performs hard work over a long period of time.
  ‘he was a workhorse of an actor, often appearing in as many as forty plays in a year’
  ‘Both players mix OK strikeout numbers with good groundball rates, and both are workhorses with solid control.’
  ‘‘They've been the workhorses of the industry and are absolutely our best friends,’ the microbiologist says.’
  ‘Chunky, practical and uninspiring, it used to be nothing more than a dependable workhorse.’
  ‘Sure, you've got tanks and jeeps, but the real workhorses of this war are helicopters and PBR patrol boats.’
  ‘Coming from Land Rover, which had made its name in producing rugged off-road workhorses used by farmers, the military and police the world over, the new model aimed to continue the tradition.’
  ‘He's also near the top of the offensive rebounding charts and is among the NBA's biggest workhorses in terms of minutes played.’
  ‘Despite all this, the truck, a workhorse used by farmers and builders throughout the world, still managed to drive into the Top Gear studio after only relatively minor repairs.’
  ‘Transistors are best known as the workhorses of the computing world; a computer's microprocessor chip contains millions of these tiny, voltage-controlled switches.’
  ‘The Hercules aircraft used by the RAAF are slow by modern standards, but the big four prop engine planes are reliable workhorses used, of course, the world over.’
  ‘Communications satellites have become the workhorses in this area due to their effectiveness and efficiency.’
  ‘Common diode lasers - the type used in laser pointers and grocery-store scanners - are cheap laboratory workhorses for colors ranging from orange to infrared.’
  ‘And it wasn't made any easier by the fact that the genius works like a horse and that the workhorse made himself into a genius during the season.’
  ‘Lloyd was a workhorse out of the Blue Jays' bullpen in 1999, and that may have been one of the factors that led to his shoulder surgery in 2000.’
  ‘They're sort of workhorses of the airline industry.’
  ‘Thundering across fields remains the preserve of a small band of well-built, farm-ready workhorses with indestructible axles.’
  ‘Gradually he made a name for himself as (so he put it) a workhorse and not a show horse; his fellow senators came to admire him.’
  ‘He's a workhorse on a team that plays hard defensively, but provides little cushion offensively.’
  ‘If jazzy products and packages are the show horses, a dairy's filling process can be considered the workhorse of an operation.’
  ‘Galvanometers are the workhorses behind many laser-based, materials-processing applications such as ablating, cutting, drilling, marking, and welding.’
  ‘Motors and drives - the workhorses of many dairy plants - can play an important role in lowering kilowatt hours.’
  hard worker, toiler, stakhanovite, galley slave
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