Horses and the English Language

Watching Horsepower with Martin Clunes the other night, he mentioned how the English language is littered with phrases related to horses.  Horses were once key to our society and their importance in history has left its traces in our language which is full of horse and horse related idioms. I thought it might be fun to explore this a bit more and see how many examples I could find so here goes...

image courtesy of www.freefoto.com 

Horses are often used as a smilie to emphasise certain traits:men are as strong as a horse, virile men are hung like a stallion, we eat like a horse or feel like we could eat a horse.  Girls wear their hair in ponytails, we collect bits and pieces.  We even have nightmares and men describe their wives as nags.  Anyway here are a few more expressions:


"Champing at the bit"  


"Got the bit between his teeth"  


"Stop horsing around"  


"You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink"  


"Get off your high horse"  


"Hold your horses"  


"One-horse town"  


"Wild horses could not drag me away"  .


"Straight from the horse's mouth"  


"flogging a dead horse"  


"he's a dark horse"  


"put the cart before the horse" 


"Locking the stable door after the horse has bolted."  


"Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth"  


"hell for leather" 


"riding roughshod over someone"  
"giving someone a leg up"  


"backing the wrong horse"  


"one-horse race" 


"neck and neck"  


"drive a coach and horses through it"


"put out to pasture"


Can anyone think of anymore?  Let me know.  Hope this made you smile.