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horsepower

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
See also: horse-power and horse power

English

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Etymology

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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).

Pronunciation

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Noun

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English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia

horsepower (countable and uncountable, plural horsepowers or horsepower)

  1. (uncountable) Power derived from the motion of a horse.
    • 1971, Gwen White, Antique Toys And Their Background, page 86:
      Shillibeer's bus came in 1829 drawn by three horses. Later two horses were found sufficient to pull these closed wagonettes, which eventually had outside seats, and later on the substitution of a motor for horsepower.
    • 1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 150:
      The Sun Inn is an attractive black-and-white building, and has an old mounting block outside as a reminder of the days when horsepower meant four legs and a saddle.
    • 2003, Gavin Weightman, What the Industrial Revolution Did for Us, page 57:
      The wheel was to have been turned by horsepower, but it was adapted to be driven by a mill-wheel on the river Derwent […]
  2. A nonmetric unit of power (symbol hp) with various definitions, for different applications. The most common of them is probably the mechanical horsepower, approximately equal to 745.7 watts.
    • 2012 March 22nd, David Blockley, Engineering: A Very Short Introduction (309), Oxford University Press, →ISBN, chapter 2: “The age of gravity – time for work”, page 20:
      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 definition is that 1 horsepower is 746 joules per second or 746 watts.
  3. A metric unit (symbol often PS from the German abbreviation), approximately equal to 735.5 watts.
  4. (uncountable) Strength.
    political horsepower

Synonyms

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Derived terms

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Translations

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Anagrams

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