Word.ws English Dictionary

one-trick pony

one-trick pony noun: a performing animal (especially a pony) that knows only one trick.

Noun

one-trick pony (plural one-trick ponies)

  1. A performing animal (especially a pony) that knows only one trick.
  2. (broadly, idiomatic) A person or group noteworthy for only a single achievement, skill, or characteristic.
    • He's a one-trick pony / One trick is all that horse can do / He does one trick only / It's the principal source of his revenue1980, Paul Simon, “One-Trick Pony”

Forms of one-trick pony

pluralone-trick ponies
alternative formone trick pony

Words formed from one-trick pony

Questions about one-trick pony

What does one-trick pony mean?
One-trick pony means a performing animal (especially a pony) that knows only one trick.
What part of speech is one-trick pony?
One-trick pony is a noun.
What is the plural of one-trick pony?
The plural of one-trick pony is one-trick ponies.

Words near one-trick pony in the dictionary

  1. one-track
  2. one-track mind
  3. one-track minds
  4. one-trick
  5. one-trick ponies
  6. one-trick pony
  7. one-trick-ponyism
  8. one-tricked
  9. one-tricking
  10. one-tricks
  11. one-turn kill

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: one-trick pony (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: En-au-one-trick pony.ogg.

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