coach horse
Americannoun
Etymology
Origin of coach horse
First recorded in 1580–90
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Anderson is like the family coach horse," Novelist William Faulkner once said; "He's dependable, you can trust him to take the children to Sunday school safely.
From Time Magazine Archive
His head was back-flung, his arms akimbo, and he showed a hock action, despite his age, that would have inspired a coach horse with bitter envy.
From The Red Debt Echoes from Kentucky by MacDonald, Everett
A hackney coach horse turned into a field of grass, falls not more eagerly to a breakfast which lasts the whole day, than I attacked the old folios, so respectably covered with dust.
From Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey by Cottle, Joseph
Only if he is very ambitious of sight-seeing need he have recourse to coach, horse, or the popular American—but acclimatised—buggy.
From Australian Pictures Drawn with Pen and Pencil by Willoughby, Howard
I am like the old hackney coach horse, Mr. Weller—or is it Mr. Jingle—tells us of; if the shafts were drawn away I should probably collapse.
From Paul Kelver, a Novel by Jerome, Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka)
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
