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Examples
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The Beltway media will allow McCain to use Clinton as a stalkinghorse to attack Obama all day long, and they'll just eat it up.
Hillary Backers In Pennsylvania Meet Privately With Top McCain Adviser 2009
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Duke S. He uses his folly like a stalkinghorse, and under the presentation of that he shoots his wit.
Gammerstang commented on the word stalkinghorse
(noun) - (1) Sometimes a real horse, sometimes the figure of one cut out and carried by the sportsman. It being found that wild fowl, which would take alarm at the appearance of a man, would remain quiet when they saw only a horse approaching, advantage was taken of it, for the shooter to conceal himself behind a real or artificial horse to get within shot of his game. --Robert Nares' Glossary of the Works of English Authors, 1859 (2) To supply the want of a stalking-horse you may make one of pieces of old canvas, which you must form into the shape of an old horse, with the head bending downwards, as if he grazed. --Gervase Markham's English Husbandman, 1615
February 11, 2018