Word.ws English Dictionary

horse-power

horse-power is the alternative spelling of horsepower.

horse-power is the obsolete spelling of horse power.

Meaning of horsepower

Noun

horsepower (countable and uncountable, plural horsepowers or horsepower)

  1. (literally, uncountable) Power derived from the motion of a horse.
    • Shillibeer's bus came in 1829 drawn by three horses. Later two horses were found sufficient to pull these closed wagonettes, which eventually had outside seats, and later on the substitution of a motor for horsepower.1971, Gwen White, Antique Toys And Their Background, page 86
  2. A nonmetric unit of power with various definitions, commonly the mechanical horsepower, approximately equal to 745.7 watts.
    • Equally I can stand in a station like Lucerne in Switzerland, and watch with ill-concealed admiration the majestic entry of one of the latest Gotthard "Ae 6/6" electrics, packing 6,000 horsepower within its 60 ft. of length and 121 tons of weight, with its sleek dark green sides and handsome...1955 April, Cecil J. Allen, “British Locomotive Practice and Performance”, in Railway Magazine, page 261
    Synonyms:
    hp
  3. Metric horsepower, a metric unit approximately equal to 735.5 watts.
    Synonyms:
    PS
  4. (figuratively, uncountable) Strength, performance capability, specs, or similar.
    • political horsepower

Meaning of horse power

Noun

horse power (plural horse powers)

  1. (dialectal, historical) Any of a class of machines that used draft horses as a source of power to an output shaft or sheave. Treadmill types and merry-go-round–like types existed.
    • In that era, they powered their corn sheller and their thresher with a horse power.
    Synonyms:
    horse engine
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: motive effort supplied by one or more horses.
    • In the 1920s through 1940s, the push for power farming aimed to replace horse power with tractor power on the farm.

Questions about horse-power

What is horse-power the alternative spelling of?
Horse-power is the alternative spelling of horsepower.

Words near horse-power in the dictionary

  1. horse-nails
  2. horse-opera
  3. horse-operas
  4. horse-operatic
  5. horse-play
  6. horse-power
  7. horse-pox
  8. horse-race
  9. horse-races
  10. horse-radish
  11. horse-radishes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: horse-power (page history and authors); horsepower (page history and authors); horse power (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: “horse-power.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/horse-power. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.