Word.ws English Dictionary

back the wrong horse

back the wrong horse verb: to support something or someone that later turns out to be unsuccessful.

Verb

back the wrong horse (third-person singular simple present backs the wrong horse, present participle backing the wrong horse, simple past and past participle backed the wrong horse)

  1. (idiomatic) To support something or someone that later turns out to be unsuccessful.
    • This might mean that I waste vast amounts of time searching for a species only to find that it no longer counted when the new regime is in place. All that effort spent backing the wrong horse.2005, Sean Dooley, The Big Twitch, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, page 32

Synonyms of back the wrong horse

Antonyms

Forms of back the wrong horse

third-person singular presentbacks the wrong horse
present participlebacking the wrong horse
past participlebacked the wrong horse
pastbacked the wrong horse

Questions about back the wrong horse

What does back the wrong horse mean?
Back the wrong horse means to support something or someone that later turns out to be unsuccessful.
What part of speech is back the wrong horse?
Back the wrong horse is a verb.
What is the past tense of back the wrong horse?
The past tense of back the wrong horse is backed the wrong horse.

Words near back the wrong horse in the dictionary

  1. back taxes
  2. back teeth
  3. back that train up
  4. back the field
  5. back the right horse
  6. back the wrong horse
  7. back then
  8. back time
  9. back titrate
  10. back titrated
  11. back titrates

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: back the wrong horse (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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