What does the idiom hold your horses come from?
Originally, hold your horses literally meant to pull up on a horse one was riding or driving from a wagon in order to make the horse halt. One may imagine many different instances where the command to hold your horses would be employed in a time where all transportation was powered by horses.
What figure of speech is hold your horses?
Figurative Language
What’s another way to say hold your horses?
What is another word for hold your horses?
wait | be patient |
---|---|
wait on | stay up for |
abide | hold your fire |
hold on | sweat it out |
twiddle thumbs | kick your heels |
How do you use Hold your horse in a sentence?
Example Sentences
- Hold your horses!
- Hold your horses, will you!
- We haven’t quite finished yet.
- Hold your horses!
- Just hold your horses till we have an official communication, then you can let the news out.
- We are getting late to go to the ceremony and mom is still yelling, “Hold your horses!
- Please hold your horses.
Who first said hold your horses?
In Book 23 of the Iliad, Homer writes “Hold your horses!” when referring to Antilochus driving like a maniac in a chariot race that Achilles initiates in the funeral games for Patroclus. During the noise of battle, a Roman soldier would hold his horses.
What does the idiom blue blood mean?
A blue blood is an aristocrat. Blue bloods come from privileged, noble families that are wealthy and powerful. The word blood has long referred to family ties: people you are related to share the same blood. One specific type of family is composed of blue bloods: members of the aristocracy.
Can cost an arm and a leg?
If you say that something costs an arm and a leg, you mean that it is very expensive. A week at a health farm can cost an arm and a leg.
What does upkeep cost an arm and leg mean?
An Arm And a Leg The phrase ‘costs an arm and leg’ is used to describe anything that is considered to be extremely expensive or excessively pricey. If a person thinks the cost of something is unreasonably high, they might use this common idiom to describe the price.
What does it mean by a chip off the old block?
An expression used of people who closely resemble their parents in some way: “Mark just won the same sailboat race his father won twenty years ago; he’s a chip off the old block.”
What does it mean get off your high horse?
If your sister tells you to “get off your high horse,” she means that you’re acting snobby or self-righteous, and she wants you to cut it out. The phrase high horse grew to mean “pompous or self-righteous” from there.
Where does chip off the old block come from?
Origin of Chip off the Old Block The idea behind this idiom – that something bears a resemblance to the larger piece from which it was taken – dates back to 270 BC. The analogy of a piece of stone or wood resembling the larger piece from which it was cut first appeared in Theocritus’ Idyls.
What does phrase to smell a rat mean?
phraseinformal. DEFINITIONS1. to believe that something dishonest, illegal, or wrong has happened. When I saw the look they gave each other I smelled a rat.