horses for courses

In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.

Meaning · English

Different people are suited to different things or situations.

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

Mỗi người phù hợp với những điều hoặc tình huống khác nhau

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

At Romford, horses - for - courses punters will make Simple Trend a good thing in the heats of the Joe Magnus Rose Bowl heats.
And it's horses for courses, it's secure.

British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Listed on Wikipedia “List of proverbial phrases” (CC BY-SA 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Figurative class: Metaphor (PIE-English corpus, CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-31).

Common questions

What does “horses for courses” mean?

Different people are suited to different things or situations.

Is “horses for courses” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.