Word.ws English Dictionary

willing horse

willing horse noun: one who readily performs hard work or who voluntarily tolerates an adverse situation.

Noun

willing horse (plural willing horses)

  1. (dated, idiomatic) One who readily performs hard work or who voluntarily tolerates an adverse situation.
    • [A]fter a good deal of discussion (some of it angry) among the Major-Generals, it was settled as such things are everywhere—the willing horse (which SHERMAN always is) getting the work to do.1863 November 10, “Gen. Sherman's Column”, in New York Times, retrieved 12 Feb 2014
    • [S]he said to me as quietly as a maiden might ask one to carry a glove, "Jan Ridd, carr thic^([sic]) thing for me." So I carried it for her, without any words; wondering what she was up to next, and whether she had ever heard of being too hard on the willing horse.1869, R[ichard] D[oddridge] Blackmore, “FEEDING OF THE PIGS”, in Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor. […], volume II, London: Sampson Low, Son, & Marston, […], →OCLC, pages 57–58

Examples of willing horse in a sentence

  • He saw in a moment that he had gone too far, and killed a willing horse; his face fell; I am sure he would have refunded if he could only have thought of a decent pretext.1878, Robert Louis Stevenson, “Down the Oise: To Moy”, in An Inland Voyage, London: C[harles] Kegan Paul & Co., […], →OCLC, page 141:
  • There is certainly the need to reward performance and offer incentives for success, but flogging a willing horse is not the way to do it.1999 February 18, Philip D. Delnon, “Education letter: Exhausted, underpaid: and that's a good day”, in The Independent, London, retrieved...

Forms of willing horse

pluralwilling horses

Questions about willing horse

What does willing horse mean?
Willing horse means one who readily performs hard work or who voluntarily tolerates an adverse situation.
How do you use willing horse in a sentence?
He saw in a moment that he had gone too far, and killed a willing horse; his face fell; I am sure he would have refunded if he could only have thought of a decent pretext.
What part of speech is willing horse?
Willing horse is a noun.
What is the plural of willing horse?
The plural of willing horse is willing horses.

Words near willing horse in the dictionary

  1. Williment
  2. Willimon
  3. Willimott
  4. Willina
  5. willing
  6. willing horse
  7. willing horses
  8. willing on
  9. willing suspension of disbelief
  10. willing suspensions of disbelief
  11. willing the good of another

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: willing 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-willing horse.ogg.

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