Definition
A very small town, especially one of a rural nature and offering very few or no attractions.
Origins
The term “one-horse” originated as an agricultural phrase, meaning to be drawn or worked by a single horse. This led to the use of this phrase in a metaphorical sense as something that is small or insignificant. Charles Dickens explained in his publication All the Year Round (1871): ‘One horse’ is an agricultural phrase, applied to anything small or insignificant, or to any inconsiderable or contemptible person: as a ‘one-horse town,’ a ‘one-horse bank,’ a ‘one-horse hotel,’ a ‘one-horse lawyer’, etc.
In Context
- "It's surrounded by beautiful wilderness, but otherwise it's just a one-horse town."
- "The journey took 48 hours with a stopover in a Bates-style motel in the one-horse town of Marblemount – the last services for 70 wild miles of boscage and bears."
Also Said As
- jerkwater town
- one-blink town
- Podunk
- Isolated town
- bump in the road
- jerkwater
- jerk-water
- jerkwater town
- one-horse town
- wide spot in the road
- Isolated place
- arse end of nowhere
- back of beyond
- back forty
- backcountry
- backwater
- backwoods
- beyond the black stump
- boondock
- boondocks
- boonies
- bumfuck middle of nowhere
- bumfuck nowhere
- dullsville
- edge of the earth
- edge of the world
- ends of the earth
- ends of the world
- hinterland
- middle of nowhere
- north forty
- off the beaten track
- out of the way
- sticks
- the sticks
- Actual places
- back o' Bourke
- Outer Mongolia
- Timbuktu
- Tuktoyaktuk
- Fictional places
- Anytown
- BFE
- Bumblefuck
- Bumfuck
- Egypt
- Idaho
- Iowa
- Kansas
- Minnesota
- Nowhere
- Ohio
- Buttfuck
- East Bumfuck
- East Jesus
- Hicksville
- Nowheresville
- Podunk
- Squedunk
- Whateverville
- wop-wops
- Woop Woop