Word.ws English Dictionary

backed the wrong horse

backed the wrong horse is the simple past and past participle of back the wrong horse.

Meaning of back the wrong horse

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

Questions about backed the wrong horse

What is backed the wrong horse the simple past and past participle of?
Backed the wrong horse is the simple past and past participle of back the wrong horse.

Words near backed the wrong horse in the dictionary

  1. backed oneself into a corner
  2. backed onto
  3. backed out
  4. backed the field
  5. backed the right horse
  6. backed the wrong horse
  7. backed up
  8. backed up the truck
  9. backed water
  10. backend
  11. backendish

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: backed the wrong horse (page history and authors); 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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