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Aug 8, 2008
This week's theme
Metaphorical descriptions of people

This week's words
paper tiger
loose cannon
sacred cow
tenderfoot
dark horse

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

dark horse

PRONUNCIATION:
(dark hors)

MEANING:
Someone little-known who ends up winning a contest unexpectedly.

ETYMOLOGY:
From the idea of a relatively unknown horse winning a race. The term is also used for a person who unexpectedly wins a party's nomination for a political contest, often as a compromise candidate. The OED shows the first citation of the term from the novel The Young Duke by the British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli.

USAGE:
"John King thinks he, RPB and Sheldon Hope, all from De Big Show, are the three front-runners, with Adrian Clarke as the dark horse."
Yvette Best and Carlos Atwell; Oval Awaits First Monarch; Nation News (Barbados); Jul 31, 2008.

See more usage examples of dark horse in Vocabulary.com's dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good. -Alice May Brock, author (b. 1941)

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