Never Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth

Never Look a Gift Horse Definition

Never look a gift horse in the mouth. Don’t question the value of a gift, or something positive that fell into your lap.

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Meaning

By inspecting a horse’s teeth one can determine a horses age and even his diet. Although a horse that’s given to you free as a gift should not need to be inspected deeply. Be happy with what you have and don’t insult the giver by being stingy.

Saying ‘gift horse’ instead of ‘gifted horse’ is outdated English grammar. Gifting horses at all is pretty outdated. This can lead to the idiom being very confusing to people unfamiliar with the phrase.

Never Look a Gift Horse Examples

1. You get a free car as a gift. Even if the quality isn’t great. Don’t feel the need to check under the hood, just accept it with thanks. Worst case scenario, you could sell it for parts!

Quotes

Pence is not a man to look a gift horse in the mouth. He’s got his eye on 2020.

Richard Cohen

Richard Cohen a columnist for the Washington Post. This article discusses who is worse for the U.S presidency Trump or Pence?

“There was a combination of not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, but also really not wanting to be stuck in Lord of the Rings for the rest of my life, and being desperate to kind of make sure that I could do something else with my life.”

-Sean Astin

Astin an American actor known for his role as Samwise Gamgee in ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and Mikey Walsh in ‘The Goonies’ is quoted

Never Look a Gift Horse Origin

Earliest English text appears in 1556 ‘A Dialogue Conteinyng the Nomber in Effect of All the Prouerbes in the Englishe Tongue’ by the English playwright John Heywood. The quote

‘No man ought to looke a geuen hors in the mouth.’.

A Dialogue Conteinyng the Nomber in Effect of All the Prouerbes in the Englishe Tongue by John Heywood

Even older is a latin text by St. Jerome of Stridon, in ‘The Letter to the Ephesians’ circa 400 AD. The quote:

‘Noli equi dentes inspicere donati’ translated as ‘Never inspect the teeth of a given horse’.

-St. Jerome

Fun Facts

Horses can have up to 40 teeth in adulthood vs. 32 teeth in a typical adult human.

Maybe the one gift horse they SHOULD have looked in the mouth.