powerhouse
Americannoun
plural
powerhouses-
Electricity. a generating station.
-
a person, group, team, or the like, having great energy, strength, or potential for success.
noun
-
an electrical generating station or plant
-
informal a forceful or powerful person or thing
Usage
What does powerhouse mean? A powerhouse is a powerful, forceful, or dominant person, group, or thing.In a literal sense, a powerhouse is a station or plant that generates electricity. Although it can still be used this way, terms like power plant and power station are much more common. Powerhouse is far more commonly used in the figurative way, especially in context of sports and business.Example: Because they always win, they can always recruit the best players, which makes them a perennial powerhouse in the conference.
Etymology
Origin of powerhouse
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.
Those two guys became an advertising powerhouse with ads popping up on late night shows, soap operas, billboards, and radio waves.
From Los Angeles Times
Tucked in south-western Ukraine, Odesa was an economic powerhouse before the war.
From BBC
The transaction would put the storied Hollywood studio behind “Mission: Impossible” and “The Godfather” under the same ownership as the powerhouse that brought the Harry Potter series and “Casablanca” to the big screen.
The Dodgers can operate this way because under the ownership of Guggenheim Partners CEO Mark Walter, they have developed into a financial powerhouse unlike anything baseball has ever seen.
It lies just a stone's throw away from the glitzy district of Gangnam -- one of Seoul's best known and wealthiest neighbourhoods, synonymous with South Korea's rise as an economic and cultural powerhouse.
From Barron's
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.
