horsepower
Americannoun
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a foot-pound-second unit of power, equivalent to 550 foot-pounds per second, or 745.7 watts.
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Informal. the capacity to achieve or produce; strength or talent.
The university's history faculty is noted for its intellectual horsepower.
noun
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an fps unit of power, equal to 550 foot-pounds per second (equivalent to 745.7 watts)
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a US standard unit of power, equal to 746 watts
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The horsepower is used to measure the power of engines.
This term was coined by James Watt, who invented a new type of steam engine in the eighteenth century. Watt found that the horse could do a certain amount of work per second; when he sold his steam engines, this measurement allowed him to estimate the worth of an engine in terms of the number of horses it would replace. Therefore, a six-horsepower engine was capable of replacing six horses.
Etymology
Origin of horsepower
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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.
To what end but ill comes a three-ton luxury SUV wielding four-digit horsepower?
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 5, 2026
DFSX’s software-defined architecture aligns with a broader shift from raw horsepower to specialized efficiency.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 14, 2026
"What we've done is taken two of our 74 horsepower engines from our construction machines, we've laid them on their side and we've turned the power up," Lee Harper, chief engineer at JCB, explained.
From BBC ● Jun. 1, 2026
Demand may also need time to catch up with that extra datacenter horsepower, while macro cycles are still an important consideration.
From MarketWatch ● May 28, 2026
For the first time, he understood why car engines were measured in horsepower.
From "The Mark of Athena" by Rick Riordan
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.
