July 30, 1996

gift horse

"Don't look a gift horse in the mouth"--A friend of mine says this admonition is a reference to the Trojan Horse. I contend it refers to the practice of some who look at a horse's teeth for signs of age (or disease) before purchasing the animal. If those people had looked in the Trojan Horse's mouth they would have been surprised, but maybe not vanquished.

This proverb indeed refers to the practice of gauging a horse's age by the condition of its teeth. The proverb warns against questioning the value of something received by luck or chance. It doesn't allude to the Trojan Horse--after all, it would have been a good idea if the Trojans had looked that gift horse in the mouth! (For a proverb that does refer to the Trojan Horse as a gift, we have "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts," a borrowing from the Roman poet Virgil.)

Don't look a gift horse in the mouth is a well-established proverb. It is first found in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century, and in England in several proverb collections in the sixteenth. But it was in wide circulation a millennium before that; in the fifth century, St. Jerome, in a Biblical commentary, wrote "Noli...ut vulgare proverbium est, equi dentes inspicere donati," or "Don't, as the common proverb has it, look at the teeth of a gift horse."