one-horse town
4
6.0
- noun
- /ˈwʌnˌhɔrs taʊn/
- Informal
:
pueblo de un solo caballo
- I grew up in a one-horse town in Texas, where nothing ever happened.
Examples
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But I do live in a one-horse town and am seeing that it's definitely impacting my life.
Blog text (13) -
It works to our advantage that Hera is a one-horse town, not on any beaten path.
Fiction book (2001) -
A little one horse town in New Jersey.
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The only reason we rode into this one horse town.
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You know, I remember when this was just a one-horse town, and now look at you!
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I grew up in a one-horse town in Texas.
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It used to be a one-horse town.
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Because actually the truth is that Pompeii and Herculaneum were absolutely ordinary one horse towns in southern Italy.
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Since it's the Talbert Lumber Company that feeds the horse in this one-horse town, that makes us important people.
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All I'm left to say is, if the student seeks higher knowledge and achievement, there will always be a host of incredible educators in our high schools willing to offer it to them (thanks in part to teacher unions), even in a one-horse town like the one I lived in.
Blog text (13)
Synonyms
245
1.5
A community with few people and few shops
24
5.0
A very small group of houses in the countryside
20
3.2
A small community outside a city where people live
4
9.9
A small, boring town far from big cities
1
7.0
An unpleasant run-down place where few people want to live
How Big
Surface Forms
Morphology
one-horse + town
The sense 'small, unimportant town' can be partially inferred from the components: 'one' + 'horse' implies something very small or limited, and combined with 'town' yields the idea of a tiny place. However, 'one-horse' is a figurative evaluative modifier whose connotation of insignificance/backwater is idiomatic and may require cultural exposure, so the relation is not fully transparent.
Etymology
The phrase one-horse town may come from old American towns so small they had only one horse and very little else. This picture of a place with almost nothing is why the phrase now means 'a small, unimportant town'.