noun
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a horse used for nonrecreational activities
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informal a person who takes on the greatest amount of work in a project or job
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of workhorse
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:
The Long March rocket can deliver payloads of 16 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, according to CASC, putting it in the same weight class as SpaceX’s Falcon 9 workhorse.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 10, 2026
He was an intensive user of the Fed’s workhorse economic simulations even though he frequently trashed the models when staffers included the results in briefing materials.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 22, 2026
The B-52 is considered a legendary workhorse, remaining a key part of the military’s fleet for decades thanks to constant improvements to the planes.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 16, 2026
The Falcon 9 rocket became the company's workhorse, and has carried out hundreds of missions.
From Barron's ● May 20, 2026
Like guinea pigs and mice, Henrietta’s cells have become the standard laboratory workhorse.
From "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot
But who could resist these workhorses with models named the Rooster and Baby Ben?
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 11, 2026
Nvidia’s graphics processing unit chips, or GPUs, are the workhorses of AI computing, and they’re the company’s main source of sales.
From Barron's ● May 29, 2026
Where the Southern California land meets the Pacific waters, the beaches are the glamour-pusses, but it’s the ports that are the workhorses that bring in the heavyweight bucks.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 24, 2025
I love all the workhorses, because you need them.
From BBC ● May 8, 2025
“I have all my teeth and all my hair, two fine workhorses, a four-room house, and twenty acres of land beside. I work hard and I do not smell all that bad, eh, little Chaya?”
From "The Devil's Arithmetic" by Jane Yolen
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.
