dark horse
nounDefinition of dark horse
1a : a usually little known contender (such as a racehorse) that makes an unexpectedly good showing
b : an entrant in a contest that is judged unlikely to succeed
2 : a political candidate unexpectedly nominated usually as a compromise between factions
Examples of dark horse in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
Runners-up at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil and hoping to be a dark horse here in Russia, the South Americans are keenly aware of what Saturday’s game will look like. — Joshua Robinson, WSJ, "Iceland Is Your New Favorite World Cup Team (and They Know It)," 15 June 2018 Belgium: Based purely on their squad, Belgium are debatably a dark horse. — Hayden Bird, BostonGlobe.com, "An American’s guide to picking a team to root for in the World Cup," 14 June 2018 Manual coach Ken Stovall said Zukic is a dark horse. — Nate Bryan, The Courier-Journal, "St. Francis' Eva Borders looks to repeat state tennis championship," 16 May 2018 The handheld immersion blender is the smaller-but-still-plenty-powerful dark horse for MVP. — Becky Krystal, charlotteobserver, "Why buying an immersion blender is a smooth move | Charlotte Observer," 15 May 2018 Looking down a little further, Houston is an interesting dark horse pick. — Mark Mcclusky, SI.com, "How to Win Your March Madness Pool with Science," 13 Mar. 2018 Anze Kopitar is a dark horse Hart Trophy candidate in a deep, deep pool. 11. — Jeremy Fuchs, SI.com, "Power Rankings: The Teams at the Top Are Sorting Themselves Out," 19 Mar. 2018 Third-party estimates like Chartmetric's FEL ratio demonstrate how looking beyond follower count alone can illuminate the true dark horses on Spotify in the race for engagement. — Cherie Hu, Billboard, "Millions of Followers? Yes, But Some Top Spotify Playlists Fall Short on Engagement," 3 July 2018 The still-developing trade market seems to be teetering on whether the Yankees, Dodgers, Brewers or some dark horse team pries Manny Machado from the Orioles. — Jeff Sanders, sandiegouniontribune.com, "Trade talk doesn't faze All-Star Brad Hand one bit," 12 July 2018These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'dark horse.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
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