Word.ws English Dictionary

gift horses

gift horses is the plural of gift horse.

Meaning of gift horse

Noun

gift horse (plural gift horses)

  1. (idiomatic) An apparent gift, that has substantial associated costs or drawbacks, especially a gift that does not fit perfectly with the recipient's wants or needs.
    • Having now, as he thought, balanced this little account of friendship, the captain was about to shift his saddle to this noble gift-horse when the affectionate patriarch plucked him by the sleeve, and introduced to him a whimpering, whining, leathern-skinned old squaw, that might have passed for an...1837, Washington Irving, The Adventures of Captain Bonneville

Questions about gift horses

What is gift horses the plural of?
Gift horses is the plural of gift horse.

Words near gift horses in the dictionary

  1. gift giver
  2. gift givers
  3. gift hall
  4. gift halls
  5. gift horse
  6. gift horses
  7. gift matching
  8. gift of gab
  9. gift of the gab
  10. gift of tongues
  11. gift receipt

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gift horses (page history and authors); gift 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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Cite this entry: “gift horses.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gift_horses. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.