A dictionary of Confusable Phrases: More Than 10,000 Idioms and Collocations

dark age • Dark Ages, the
dark age —a period in which there is a lack of culture and
progress in a society: Shortly before 
1
700 
B
.
C
. a dark age settled
over Egypt which was to last some one hundred and fifty years.
Dark Ages, the —the period of European history between
about 
A
.
D
. 500 and about 
A
.
D
.
1
000: During these, which are
rightly called the Dark Ages, the clergy were supreme.
dark horse • white horse
dark horse —a candidate, etc. of whom little is known but
– 91 –
dark horse

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who may unexpectedly come to the front: Every now and then
a dark horse is heard of, who is supposed to have done wonders
at some obscure small college.
Note: 
The expression does not correlate in meaning with the
phrase gray mare, the—(dated) the wife who rules her husband
(in allusion to the saying “the gray mare is the better horse”):
Thus, by the covetousness of this woman, who was the gray
mare, and the folly of the master … my good principles were
nearly eradicated from my bosom.
white horse—
1
. (pl.) white foam and spray on the crests of
waves: As mariners say, the sea is covered with “white horses.”
2. (UK) a horse carved into the side of a chalk hill and visible
from a great distance (most some hundreds of years old): The
Uffington white horse is by far the oldest … and is of an entirely
different design. 3. (White Horse) the proprietary name of a
brand of whisky: White Horse was the first distillery to sport
screw caps. Cf.: white mule—(U.S. sl.) cheap or illicitly distilled
whisky: I know a good bootlegger over there in Santa Fe, and
if you take me over there, I’ll buy you a gallon of White Mule.
4. (U.S. Drug users) cocaine: White Horse, White Lady, White
Girl: Those are just a handful of cocaine’s street names.