Word.ws English Dictionary

carthorse

carthorse noun: a large, strong horse used for pulling heavy loads.

Noun

carthorse (plural carthorses)

  1. A large, strong horse used for pulling heavy loads.
    • The blacksmith's forge shone bright on the opposite side of the way, and the proprietor had the hind-leg of a carthorse in his leather-coated lap.1840, Horace Smith, editor, Memoirs, Letters, and Comic Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, of the Late James Smith
    • He is not a man of independent fortune, for he works like a carthorse.1852, Charles Dickens, Household Words

Forms of carthorse

pluralcarthorses
alternative formcart horse
alternative formcart-horse

Origin of carthorse

From Middle English carthors, cartehors, from Old English crætehors (“a carthorse”), equivalent to cart + horse.

Questions about carthorse

What does carthorse mean?
Carthorse means a large, strong horse used for pulling heavy loads.
What part of speech is carthorse?
Carthorse is a noun.
What is the plural of carthorse?
The plural of carthorse is carthorses.

Words near carthorse in the dictionary

  1. carthamone
  2. carthamus red
  3. Carthen
  4. Carthens
  5. Carthew
  6. carthorse
  7. carthorses
  8. carthoun
  9. carthouns
  10. carthouse
  11. carthouses

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: carthorse (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Naomi Persephone Amethyst (NaomiAmethyst)-carthorse.wav.

Cite this entry: “carthorse.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/carthorse. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.