Word.ws English Dictionary

my kingdom for a horse

my kingdom for a horse phrase: the speaker is willing to sacrifice anything to obtain a seemingly unimportant item that is invaluable at a critical moment.

Phrase

my kingdom for a horse

  1. The speaker is willing to sacrifice anything to obtain a seemingly unimportant item that is invaluable at a critical moment.

Origin of my kingdom for a horse

From William Shakespeare's Richard III (written c. 1593; published 1597), Act V, scene iv (spelling modernized): "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse."

Questions about my kingdom for a horse

What does my kingdom for a horse mean?
My kingdom for a horse means the speaker is willing to sacrifice anything to obtain a seemingly unimportant item that is invaluable at a critical moment.
What part of speech is my kingdom for a horse?
My kingdom for a horse is a phrase.

Words near my kingdom for a horse in the dictionary

  1. my gosh
  2. my guy
  3. my hat
  4. my head's a shed
  5. my heavens
  6. my kingdom for a horse
  7. my Ladies
  8. my Lady
  9. my lady's washbowl
  10. my land
  11. my lands

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: my kingdom for a 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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-my kingdom for a horse.wav.

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