Meaning of stalking horse | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A horse used as cover by a hunter stalking game.
   dated
2. A candidate put forward to serve a hidden, ulterior purpose in a political campaign, such as testing the field for another potential candidate by gauging voter sentiment or covertly helping another candidate by attracting voters away from a third candidate.
   idiomatic
3. A person, thing, or expedient used in a deceptive manner, to achieve some hidden purpose.
   broadly, idiomatic

Equivalents

Examples

“The Ministry had their candidate, a stalking-horse, useful only to receive the purely Ministerial votes. The votes, thus divided, gave no result.”

“Any open challenge would likely come first as trial balloons from backbench "stalking horse" candidates, who could never win.”

“But the other narrative goes after Biden as though the Democrats had actually nominated Bernie Sanders, insisting that his advancing age makes him a decrepit vessel for the radical left, a stalking horse not just for Kamala Harris but also for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and antifa.”

“Do you think my daughter […] fit for nothing but to be a stalking horse, to stand before you, while you take aim at my wife?”

“"Let the great of the earth give but half the care to prevent, that they show to punish, offences against themselves, and what is now called justice will no longer be a stalking-horse to enable a few to live at the cost of the rest.”

“Environmentalists have used the owl as a stalking horse to save the last 10% of old-growth forest in the Northwest.”

“The post, culling online chatter from supremacist sites, said hate groups were increasingly worried that law enforcement authorities would use Mr. Obama’s candidacy as a stalking horse to justify a government clampdown.”

CEFR level