Don't look a gift horse in the mouth
This expression, also often expressed as ‘never look a gift horse in the mouth’, is as pertinent today as it ever was.
As horses grow up, they grow more teeth and their existing teeth begin to change shape and project further forward. Determining a horse’s age from its teeth is a specialist task, but it can be done. This incidentally is also the source of another teeth/age-related expression - long in the tooth.
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The advice given in the 'don't look...’ expression is: when receiving a gift, be grateful for what it is; don't imply you wished for more by assessing its value.
The expression appears in print in English in 1546, as “don’t look a given horse in the mouth”, in John Heywood's A dialogue conteinyng the nomber in effect of all the prouerbes in the Englishe tongue, where he gives it as:
“No man ought to looke a geuen hors in the mouth.”
It is probable that Heywood obtained the expression from a Latin text of St. Jerome, The Letter to the Ephesians, around AD 400, which contains the text
‘Noli equi dentes inspicere donati’ (Never inspect the teeth of a given horse). Where St Jerome got it from, we aren't ever likely to know.
Heywood is an interesting character in the development of English. He was employed at the courts of Henry VIII and Mary I as a singer, musician and playwright. His Proverbs is a comprehensive collection of those sayings known at the time and includes many that are still with us:
- Many hands make light work
- Rome wasn't built in a day
- A good beginning makes a good ending and so on.
We can’t attribute these to Heywood himself; he collected them from the literary works of the day and from common parlance. He can certainly be given the credit for introducing many expressions to a wide and continuing audience, including one that Shakespeare later borrowed - All’s well that ends well.
In modern usage, the expression Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth means don’t be ungrateful when you receive a gift.