Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
horse-and-buggy

horse-and-buggy

3 9.0
Old-fashioned in a way from before cars
  • adjective
  • /ˈhɔrs ənd ˈbʌɡi/
translation icon : de caballos y carruajes
  • As I soon learned, Election Day Tuesday is a relic of the 19th century, when people (men) needed time to travel by horse and buggy to the polls without missing any of the three days of worship.
  • horse-and-buggy era
  • horse-and-buggy days

Examples

  • To the best of my knowledge, revolvers are no longer authorized in the FBI, and I expect the new breed of young, computer-savvy, casual-dress-on-Friday special agents would look on them as horse-and-buggy stuff.

    Blog text (30)

  • This was stuff that was built out and fleshed out in the age of horse and buggy and in the age of trains.

  • The typewriter will go the way of the horse and buggy.

    Fathers and Daughters (2015)

  • "Yeah, well, if you and I were still stuck in a horse and buggy, we'd still be here too."

    Fiction book (1996)

  • The Amish there could still be in the horse-and-buggy days.

    Fiction book (1995)

  • Because now you're talking about intelligence systems that are just, I mean, this is no longer just going from horse and buggy to to the car.

  • You pull on that to close the door almost gives you feelings of like a carriage door from the horse and buggy days, such as it was in the Roadmaster.

  • When she was a youngster, which somehow seems closer all the time instead of farther away, the only way to go anywhere was by horse and buggy. Heaven was the half-day trip to the county seat for the Fourth of July, and all the glory was yet to come: the automobiles and paved roads, radio and television, the great airships, trips into space.

    Fiction book (1996)

  • Living in a horse-and-buggy society means relying on old-fashioned methods rather than modern technology.

  • Many people long for the simpler life of the horse-and-buggy era, away from the noise of the city.

Antonyms

modern
∞ 1.4

Relating to the present time and new ways of doing things

contemporary
28 4.2

Happening at the same time as someone or something else

How Old-Fashioned

obsolete
93 5.8
antiquated
32 8.2
horse-and-buggy
3 9.0
old-fashioned
149 4.7
traditional
994 1.5

Surface Forms

horse-and-buggy positive

Morphology

horse-and-buggy = horse + buggy (semi-transparent) = horse + buggy

The components 'horse' and 'buggy' are literal and recognisable, but the adjectival meaning 'old-fashioned; characteristic of the pre-automobile era' is a generalized, metaphorical extension.

Etymology

Horse-and-buggy comes from the picture of a horse pulling a small cart called a buggy, which people used 'before cars'. So, calling something 'horse-and-buggy' means it is old-fashioned or from an earlier time.