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
Discover More
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.
In the age of electrification, it’s bonkers to still be fiddling with pound-feet, horsepower and miles.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 11, 2026
But the reality is that on-device AI requires a fair amount of computing horsepower that involves system memory, or DRAM.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 9, 2026
He said the finished car would have about 1,600 horsepower in total.
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
Once, the Dream’s parameters were caged by technology and by the limits of horsepower and wind.
From "Between the World and Me" by Ta-Nehisi Coates
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.
