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
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
Wales hit back shortly after, keeping it among the hard-carrying forwards before shipping the ball out for workhorse Keight to power over.
From BBC ● May 17, 2026
During my first year on the national team, I was a workhorse who showed no mercy on the strip, but I was a lamb among my teammates, with the goal of forging friendships with them.
From "Proud" by Ibtihaj Muhammad
Noncombat ships are the unglamorous workhorses of military deployments.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 10, 2026
Nvidia’s chips, known as GPUs, are the main workhorses of the AI computing revolution.
From Barron's ● Dec. 26, 2025
Gus Atkinson and Carse could be the workhorses of the tour.
From BBC ● Nov. 21, 2025
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
Pulling Hannah past the noisy celebrants, Gitl led her to the one wagon facing the rest, where the men were busy at work encouraging the two strong workhorses to turn around.
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.
