Buffalo Bill (see also BuffaloBill) Cody and Wild Bill Hickok were Pony Express riders in their youth.
An early advertisement for Pony Express riders is well known: “Wanted: Young, skinny, wiry fellows not over eighteen. Must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred.”
An Americanism dating back to 1840–50
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Stagecoach services, like the pony express, took days to traverse the gutted tracks across the wilderness that still separated America’s nascent cities.
From The Wall Street Journal • Sep. 28, 2025
Why would anyone deliver a thumb drive by pony express or carrier pigeon when the internet was made for the purpose of quickly and easily delivering data electronically?
From Slate • Dec. 14, 2018
Filippini and other ranchers have sued, staged a "pony express" protest ride on horseback to Washington, D.C., and petitioned for Furtado's ouster.
From Los Angeles Times • Jan. 14, 2016
Mail in the area is temporarily being delivered by the 450-member National Pony Express Association, a private society that operates California's original pony express station, seven miles from the mud slide.
From Time Magazine Archive
Monthly mails had been established between San Francisco and San Diego, as well as intermediate points, and there was talk of a pony express to Independence, Missouri.
From Port O' Gold A History-Romance of the San Francisco Argonauts by Stellman, Louis J. (Louis John)
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.
