powerhouse
Americannoun
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powerhouses
plural
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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:
Chief creative officer at Victoria's Secret, Adam Selman, told Vogue, external that Jenner was picked for being a "cultural powerhouse".
From BBC ● Oct. 19, 2026
Not only did they win the community college’s first championship, but they did so with local players and against powerhouse schools—some of which even fielded international players.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 18, 2026
The island is a powerhouse in the semiconductor sector, producing more than 90 percent of the world's most advanced chips used to train and power AI systems.
From Barron's ● Oct. 8, 2026
Heading into his senior year at Vandegrift High School—a powerhouse in Austin, Texas—Mestemaker was sure the starting job he’d spent three long years waiting for would finally be his.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 8, 2026
In the center of that display hangs a portrait of powerhouse abolitionist Harriet Tubman.
From "Split the Sky" by Marie Arnold
Mitochondria are often described as the powerhouses of the cell because they produce much of the energy our bodies need to grow, move, repair tissues, and carry out everyday functions.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 3, 2026
Meanwhile, those two retail powerhouses are competing in other ways.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 24, 2026
Israel, whose senior team have qualified for the World Cup just once, had beaten global powerhouses Brazil in the quarter-finals of the under-20 version of the tournament.
From BBC ● Sep. 17, 2026
Hong Kong is "less relevant for China's national tech ambitions" than mainland powerhouses like Shenzhen, said Gary Ng, a senior economist at Natixis.
From Barron's ● Sep. 13, 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
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
