horsepower

CEFRC1

/ˈhɔɹsˌpaʊɚ/

noun

Türkçe translations

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In plain English

  1. 01

    noun

    A unit used to measure the power of an engine.

  2. 02

    noun

    Extra detail

    A nonmetric unit of power with various definitions, commonly the mechanical horsepower, approximately equal to 745.7 watts.

Examples

  • The horsepower of a car matters not, with a donkey in control.

  • This car has more than a hundred horsepower.

At a glance

Sits at C1 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
1
Citations
5

Deep Dive

noun

Extra meanings

  1. Metric horsepower, a metric unit approximately equal to 735.5 watts.

  2. Power derived from the motion of a horse.

  3. Strength, performance capability, specs, or similar.

More examples

In context

  • My car is deficient in horsepower.

  • In the past, before the widespread adoption of SI units, the work that engines were capable of doing was compared with the work that horses could do – hence the term ‘horsepower’. Various people came up with various equivalencies, but the modern agreed defini...

  • political horsepower

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

The engine produces 300 blank, making the car very fast.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

noun

From horse + power: the unit was originally defined as the amount of power that a horse could provide. Both non-metric and metric units of power were derived from effectively identical measurements of the power a draught horse could sustain over several hours, with the difference in watts solely due to different rounding errors to express that power in round numbers in the original non-SI units (ft·lbf/min and kgf⋅m/s respectively).