or one-eyed, adj. (formerly American; now general).—Petty; insignificant; of no account. Also ONE-GOAT.
1858. Washington Star [quoted by BARTLETT]. On Friday last, the engineer of a fast train was arrested by the authorities of a ONE-HORSE town in Dauphin County, Pa., for running through the borough at a greater rate of speed than is allowed by their ordinances. Having neglected, however, to give publicity to these ordinances, they could not impose any fine; and their discomfiture was aggravated by the malicious excuse of the engineer, that ‘he didn’t know there was a town there!’
d. 1877. MOTLEY, Letters, II. 334. Any other respectable, ONE-HORSE New England city.
1884. S. L. CLEMENS (‘Mark Twain’), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, xx. There was a little ONE-HORSE town about three mile down the bend.
1886. GOLDWIN SMITH, Nineteenth Century, July, p. 21. The provincial University of Toronto was thrown open to Nonconformists, unluckily not before the practice of chartering sectarian institutions had been introduced, and Canada had been saddled with ONE-HORSE universities.
1888. Boston Weekly Globe, 28 March. It seems a shame to let a petty ONE-GOAT power kingdom insult our citizens.
