one-horse town

English

Etymology

The term “one-horse” originated as an agricultural phrase, meaning ‘to be drawn/worked by a single horse.’ This led to the use of this phrase in a metaphorical sense as something that is small or insignificant. Charles Dickens explained in his publication All the Year Round (1871): ‘One horse’ is an agricultural phrase, applied to anything small or insignificant, or to any inconsiderable or contemptible person: as a ‘one-horse town,’ a ‘one-horse bank,’ a ‘one-horse hotel,’ a ‘one-horse lawyer’, [etc.]

Pronunciation

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

Noun

one-horse town (plural one-horse towns)

1. (US, idiomatic) A very small town, especially one of a rural nature and/or offering very few or no attractions.

   Synonyms: jerkwater town, one-blink town, Podunk; see also Thesaurus:remote place

   It's surrounded by beautiful wilderness, but otherwise it's just a one-horse town.

   • 2021 February 16, Dan Richards, “Peak cabin: a fire-spotter's lonely vantage point in Washington state”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:

     The journey took 48 hours with a stopover in a Bates-style motel in the one-horse town of Marblemount – the last services for 70 wild miles of boscage and bears.

Translations

very small town

• Finnish: kyläpahanen (fi)
• French: bled paumé m (colloquial)
• German: Kuhdorf (de) n
• Russian: заштатный го́род (zaštatnyj górod), захолустный го́род (zaxolustnyj górod), захолу́стье (ru) (zaxolústʹje), дыра́ (ru) (dyrá)
• Spanish: villorrio (es) m
• Swedish: byhåla (sv) c, håla (sv) c

References

• “one-horse town”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.