Where does the saying "don’t look a gift horse in the mouth" come from?
By admin on Apr. 15, 2010.
Meaning
Don’t be ungrateful when you receive a gift.
Origin
This comes into the category of phrases called proverbs, that is, ‘short and expressive sayings, in common use, which are recognized as conveying some accepted truth or useful advice’.
As horses age their teeth begin to project further forward each year and so their age can be estimated by checking how prominent the teeth are. 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 given a present, be grateful for your good fortune and don’t look for more by examining it to assess its value.
As with most proverbs the origin is ancient and unknown. We have some clues with this one however. The phrase was originally "don’t look a given horse in the mouth" and first appears in print in 1546 in John Heywood’s A dialogue conteinyng the nomber in effect of all the prouerbes in the Englishe tongue, where he gives it as:
Category: horse gift