How to Use one-horse in a Sentence

one-horse

adjective
  • By the end of my life, there may be no one left who speaks like my father outside the hollers and the one-horse towns.
    — Annie Joy Williams, The Atlantic, 4 Jan. 2026
  • If either achieves even half the cadence and reliability of Falcon 9, the private space industry will finally move from a one-horse race to a true competition.
    — Chris Young, Interesting Engineering, 8 Sep. 2025
  • Tottenham Hotspur find themselves in a one-horse race for Eze, and while no agreement was reached after further talks on Monday, conversations continue, and there remains a good chance the move will happen.
    — James McNicholas, New York Times, 19 Aug. 2025
  • This week's Far-Flung Postcard series takes you to a food stand in the one-horse town of Marikavalasa in India, where working women go to enjoy a treat and unwind in the evening before returning to the grind.
    — Brittney Melton, NPR, 11 Dec. 2025
  • And while this has now become a one-horse race, with that proposal carrying the day heading into a May 28 vote at the league’s next Board of Governors meeting, there are still more discussions — and possible changes — to come.
    — Sam Amick, New York Times, 5 May 2026
  • The Athletic reported on Tuesday that Tottenham are in a one-horse race to sign the 27-year-old from Crystal Palace, after north London rivals Arsenal cooled their interest.
    — Elias Burke, New York Times, 20 Aug. 2025
  • Koda grew up in this one-horse California town, while Sakai’s father’s work took her family to Tokyo, New York, Mexico City, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
    — Tara Duggan, San Francisco Chronicle, 28 July 2016
  • McCarthy moved to his current studio in 2012, and around then, bought land out in the Tehachapi Mountains to serve as Wild West backdrops, not unlike the early film studios buying up tumbleweed stables in Topanga to serve as facsimiles of one-horse towns to shoot westerns.
    — Nate Freeman, Vanity Fair, 25 Feb. 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'one-horse.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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