powerhouse
Americannoun
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Electricity. a generating station.
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a person, group, team, or the like, having great energy, strength, or potential for success.
noun
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an electrical generating station or plant
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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.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
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.
See Examples For:
It then became an entertainment powerhouse by paying up for original series that could be streamed over the internet and often binged in a single evening.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 18, 2026
They arrive in an era where Korean music is a global powerhouse, and BTS its biggest poster child.
From BBC ● Jul. 17, 2026
For a fleeting few years before Prigozhin’s death, Wagner was a powerhouse in Africa.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 12, 2026
Bonnie Tyler, the husky-voiced powerhouse vocalist who delivered memorable and dramatic pop-rock songs including ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ in the 1980s, has died.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 10, 2026
As she became better and better at the job, she became an intelligence powerhouse, able to advise the Coast Guard and other agencies on everything from potential dangers to easy targets.
From "The Woman All Spies Fear" by Amy Butler Greenfield
Joining them are the HBO powerhouses “The Gilded Age” and “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” along with Apple TV’s “Your Friends and Neighbors” and last year’s biggest prestige TV conversation piece, “Pluribus.”
From Salon ● Jul. 9, 2026
Railroad growth turned rail hubs into commercial powerhouses.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 1, 2026
The traditional powerhouses of Europe and South America - the continents that hold 15 of the top 20 slots in the current Fifa rankings - have not had things entirely their own way.
From BBC ● Jun. 18, 2026
Wallace thinks that this suppression of the cells’ powerhouses is actually what’s encouraging cancer growth.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 15, 2026
How many mill towns saw their mills close; how many shoe towns saw the shoe industry move elsewhere; how many towns that were once textile powerhouses now buy all their linens from China?
From "The World Is Flat" by Thomas L. Friedman
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.
