Wooden Horse
1
8.1
- noun
- Literature
:
Caballo de Troya
- A wooden horse.
Examples
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-A large wooden horse?
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As the wooden horse slowly spun.
Blog text (15) -
But they left one thing after them... ... a great big wooden horse.
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And then to be fooled by a wooden horse.
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The citizens of the doomed city are tempted to pull the wooden horse inside through the gates with their own strength.
Academic text (2000) -
A wooden horse!
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Enormous wooden horse?
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So anyway, her old man had this huge, hollow, wooden horse built, and puts all his armies into it, and wheels it over to Troy, and says, "Hey, man, we got a present for you.
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Sinon, who tricked the Trojans into bringing the wooden horse within their gates, and Potiphar's wife, the perjured accuser of the young Joseph.
Academic text (2011) -
The Greeks won by sneaking into Troy inside a wooden horse.
Synonyms
A large hollow wooden horse that hides soldiers to let them enter the city of Troy secretly
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound literally combines 'wooden' (made of wood) + 'horse' so a B1 learner who knows both words will understand it refers to a horse made of wood. However, the specific mythological/deceptive sense (a hollow device built to conceal soldiers and trick the Trojans) is not derivable from the constituents alone and requires cultural or idiomatic knowledge, so the transparency is partial.
Etymology
The Wooden Horse comes from a famous Greek story about the war at Troy: soldiers hid inside a large hollow wooden horse that was taken into the city, and at night they climbed out and opened the gates. That's why 'Wooden Horse' is used to mean a gift or thing that hides danger or a secret attack.