wheel horse

or wheel-horse

noun

Also called wheeler. a horse, or one of the horses, harnessed behind others and nearest the front wheels of a vehicle.
Chiefly South Atlantic States. the left-hand horse of a pair hitched to a wagon or plow.

Chiefly South Midland and Southern U.S. a reliable, diligent, and strong worker.

Origin of wheel horse

First recorded in 1700–10

Words Nearby wheel horse

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use wheel horse in a sentence

Garrett one day, "every church has to have a wheel-horse, and I might as well be the wheel-horse as any body."
Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler | Pardee Butler
Probably nothing in the world could have more amazed his than to find Roscoe—the steady old wheel-horse—in this condition.
The Turmoil | Booth Tarkington
He was instantly met and borne to the snow by Bones, the second “wheel-horse.”
On the Yukon Trail | Roy J. Snell
Mind and body need to be driven tandem, the body for the wheel horse and the intellect the leader.
Around The Tea-Table | T. De Witt Talmage
The four-wheel horse cabs seem very slow to us now, but they carried more luggage than the taxi-cabs can.
The Children's Book of London | Geraldine Edith Mitton

British Dictionary definitions for wheel horse

wheel horse

noun

another word for wheeler (def. 1)
US and Canadian a person who works steadily or hard

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

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