Word.ws English Dictionary

backs the wrong horse

backs the wrong horse is the third-person singular simple present indicative 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 backs the wrong horse

What is backs the wrong horse the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Backs the wrong horse is the third-person singular simple present indicative of back the wrong horse.

Words near backs the wrong horse in the dictionary

  1. backs oneself into a corner
  2. backs onto
  3. backs out
  4. backs the field
  5. backs the right horse
  6. backs the wrong horse
  7. backs to the wall
  8. backs up
  9. backs up the truck
  10. backs water
  11. backsack

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: backs 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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