Word.ws English Dictionary

dark horses

dark horses is the plural of dark horse.

Meaning of dark horse

Noun

dark horse (plural dark horses)

  1. (idiomatic) Someone who possesses talents or favorable characteristics that are not known or expected by others.
    • ‘She’s a dark horse,’ he said. ‘She knows just as much about climbing mountains as you or I. In fact, she was ahead of me the whole time, and I lost her.’1952, Daphne Du Maurier, “Monte Verità”, in The Apple Tree
  2. (idiomatic) A candidate for an election who is nominated unexpectedly, without previously having been discussed or considered as a likely choice.
    • That left Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, 69 — a quiet American dark horse who had, surprisingly, emerged in the evening’s vote — as a source of particular interest.2025 May 11, Jason Horowitz, Emma Bubola, Elizabeth Dias, Patricia Mazzei, “How a Quiet American Cardinal Became Pope”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
  3. A horse whose capabilities are not known.
  4. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see dark, horse.

Questions about dark horses

What is dark horses the plural of?
Dark horses is the plural of dark horse.

Words near dark horses in the dictionary

  1. dark gopher frogs
  2. dark green fritillaries
  3. dark green fritillary
  4. dark hearted
  5. dark horse
  6. dark horses
  7. dark humor
  8. dark humour
  9. dark hydrogen
  10. dark jungle glories
  11. dark jungle glory

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dark horses (page history and authors); dark 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.

Last updated:

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