noun
Freq #13059
Meanings
-
1
noun
a unit of power equal to 746 watts
If it could be controlled it would furnish millions of horsepower for a long time.
Thesaurus
Word family
Derived forms
horsepower-hour
Etymology
From 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).