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A section for all you budding etymologists where each week the origin of a word or phrase is investigated.
This week it is..... Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth
Don’t be ungrateful when you receive a gift.
Proverbs are ‘short and expressive sayings, in common
use, which are recognized as conveying some accepted
truth or useful advice’. This example, also often
expressed as ‘never look a gift horse in the mouth’, is as
pertinent today as it ever was.
As horses develop they grow more teeth and their
existing teeth begin to change shape and project further
forward. Determining a horse’s age from its teeth is a
specialist task, but it can be done. This incidentally is
also the source of another teeth/age related phrase long in the tooth.
The advice given in the ‘don’t look...’ proverb is: when
receiving a gift be grateful for what it is; don’t imply you
wished for more by assessing its value.
As with most proverbs the origin is ancient and
unknown. We have some clues with this one however.
The phrase appears in print in English in 1546, as “don’t
look a given horse in the mouth”, in John Heywood’s
A dialogue conteinyng the nomber in effect of all the
prouerbes in the Englishe tongue, where he gives it as:
“No man ought to looke a geuen hors in the mouth.”
It is probable that Heywood obtained the phrase from
a Latin text of St. Jerome, The Letter to the Ephesians,
circa AD 400, which conatins the text ‘Noli equi dentes
inspicere donati’ (Never inspect the teeth of a given
horse). Where St Jerome got it from we aren’t eve likely
to know.
Heywood is an interesting character in the development
of English. He was employed at the courts of Henry VIII
and Mary I as a singer, musician, and playwright. His
Proverbs is a comprehensive collection of those sayings
known at the time and includes many that are still with
us:
- Many hands make light work
- Rome wasn’t built in a day
- A good beginning makes a good ending
and so on. These were expressed in the literary language
of the day, as in “would yee both eat your cake, and have
your cake?”, but the modern versions are their obvious
descendents.
We can’t attribute these to Heywood himself; he
collected them from the literary works of the day and
from common parlance. He can certainly be given the
credit for introducing many proverbs to a wide and
continuing audience, including one that Shakespeare
later borrowed - All’s well that ends well.
Is there an English phrase or saying that you would
like to know more about?
Email it to us on [email protected]
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