My impression of the phrase is that it means “don’t expect a free gift to be worth anything”, sort of like those “free” gifts you can get from your credit card company.
Now the explanation I’d always heard was that it had to do with thoroughbreds. The expensive race horses are tatooed on the inside of their lip, so if you look in the mouth you’re checking for a tatoo. Thus expecting your free horse to be a champion.
Okay, your answer sounds better than mine - come to think of it mine does sound urban-legendish.
I guess my main point is that looking the horse in the mouth is expecting it to be more than it is, rather than expecting it to be less than it is.
I guess I’ll come over here to Irish’s thread to talk, he looks like a sensible person.
Well, yeah, speaking as a lifelong horse-crazy person, I think Ken’s pretty much got the Straight Dope on this. It’s to do with teeth, not tattoos, and it means, “Don’t ask too many questions.”
And it DOES mean “don’t expect a free gift to be worth anything”, because the implication of checking your gift horse’s teeth is that you’ll probably find him to be considerably older than you’d like, and hence not as valuable. “Oh, a horse? For me? How thoughtful…[opens mouth, checks teeth, realizes horse probably won’t last another winter]…bummer.”
Because who’s gonna just hand you a perfectly good horse? Right, like I believe that. The 21st century equivalent would be to have somebody give you a car (he’s going away to college and he says you can have his car) but you don’t want to inquire too closely as to whether the odometer may have been turned back.
Well sort of, but it’s less about expectations and more about attitude. Any horse is better than none, so rather than looking for faults, insulting the donnee and preparing youself for disappointment, be grateful for the horse you got.
I’m with picmr and the columnist who originally answered the question. The basic meaning is: when you’re given a gift, don’t insult the giver by examining the gift for flaws, or to determine if it really is what the giver says it is. Just be suitably grateful for the gift.
The modern equivalent might be examining a supposedly new gift for signs of wear or previous usage – or to go back to the store and find out how much it really cost. Or taking a “gift” car to a mechanic.
Just like individual words, how these expressions are used can evolve over time. So from a cynical, late-20th century perspective one could use it to mean, “Don’t look too closely at the gift or you’ll be disappointed” – especially in an age when freebies are often worth what you paid for them.
Okay, so we’re repeating each other but not communicating.
My interpretation has always been “Don’t expect it to be worth anything.”
Some of you (including the column) seem to be saying it means “Don’t insult the gift giver by checking to see what it’s worth.”
I see that as a distinction in meaning. Maybe it’s too fine a difference to matter all that much, but it is the difference to which I was trying to call attention.
As for any horse being better than none, that’s not always true. What if the horse is a worn out weak old nag that requires to be fed, groomed, exercised, etc? You have a net loss to owning it. Sort of like the White Elephant explanation. The emperor owned all the white elephants automatically because they were rare. He decreed they could never be used for work. But they still had to be fed and housed and cleaned up after. So he would give white elephants as “gifts” to someone who irked him. You got all the responsibility for caring for the elephant, and got no benefit of work from the ownership. Same way with the horse in question - if the horse can do no work and provide no benefit but is a drain on resources (time and money), it is a net loss, and thus the gift giver is not necessarily treating you that nicely by giving it to you.
This is very clear and I am surprised anyone has any doubts as it is a most common saying.
It means, when you are given something as a present accept it gracefully without hint or complaint that it is not worth as much as you would like or as you had hoped. Do not find faults or look for thembecause it is a gift and you should not be demanding.
Imagine a kid whose father buys him a used car to get around and the kid complains to his friend that he would have liked to get a better car. His friend would say “you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth”, meaning “be grateful for what you got as it is a present and do not find fault with it”. In other words, if you want something else buy it yourself and quit complaining.