I’ve always had a passion for language and history, so I thought it would be fun to share some of my favorite idioms in bite-sized segments!
To kick things off, I have to confess that I was pretty shocked—and a little embarrassed—to realize I’d been mishearing and mispronouncing the saying “Don’t Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth” as “Don’t LICK a Gift Horse in the Mouth.” My husband kindly called me out on it recently. I’ve always found that saying a bit puzzling, but I never took the time to really think about what it meant until now!
The phrase “Don’t Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth” is more than 1,500 years old and can be traced back to around AD 400. It comes from the practice of checking a horse’s age and health by looking at its teeth (hence, looking in the mouth). It was considered pretty rude to do this to a horse that was given to you as a gift. Basically, the saying encourages us to accept gifts graciously and to be grateful, even if it’s not exactly what we wanted.
While I was digging into this idiom, I discovered a lovely anonymous poem called “The Age of a Horse” on the Rutgers University website. If you’re curious, check out my YouTube video to hear it! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did! Thanks for reading!! ~Tina Mae
Citations:
Grammar-Monster
Rutgers University New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station
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