Like many erstwhile proverbs , “ Do n’t look a gift horse in the mouth ” used to have a very real significance before the passage of clip turned it into afigure of language . Not looking a talent horse in the rima oris means being grateful for a gift , even if you secretly wish well for something better — and it originated long before the conception of cars , whenhorseswere widely used for work and Department of Transportation .
The first appearance of this adage is often traced back to the London - born writer John Heywood ’s midway English textA Dialogue : Of the Effectual Proverbs in the English Tongue , published in 1546 , in which the authorargues that“No man ought to looke a geuen [ give ] horse in the mouth . ”
However , theproverbappears to be much older , with etymologistspointing toSaint Jerome of Stridon , an former Catholic non-Christian priest who — in his commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians in the New Testament , date to 400 CE — wrote , “ Noli equi dentes inspicere donati , ” which translates to “ Never inspect theteethof a given buck . ”
The expression seems to have taken on its contemporary diction sometime during the seventeenth century , The poet Samuel Butler incorporate the line “ He ne’er consider’d it , as loath / To look a gift - horse in the mouth , ” in his democratic 1663 poemHubridas , setting a received subsequent writers would come after .
But why a horse ? And , more specifically , why its oral cavity ? As any forward-looking - day equestrian could secernate you , a Equus caballus ’s dentition betray its age . “ Horses have two sets of dentition , baby tooth and grownup tooth , ” according to a post by theNew Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station . The older a horse get , the more its adult teeth elongate and project outward . ( From here we get anotherequine idiom , “ Long in the tooth . ” )
“ When citizenry needed horses every day , a knight ’s value was based on his age . So if you were going to buy a horse , you would want to know its age before offering a cost , ” the mail keep . However , if someone offered you a horse for free , it was consider rude to appear into its mouthpiece and inspect its eld — just as it is consideredgauchetoday when you look up your Christmas gift ’s monetary value tag on Amazon .
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