A common idiom turns out to be 1,600 years old

Nicole and I recently returned from a trip to visit her family in Taiwan, with a stop in Japan. Among the gifts we brought back were some local snacks for friends and relatives.

“Do you think they’ll like this one?” she said, holding up a package of small pineapple cakes.

“Even if they don’t, they probably wouldn’t say anything,” I replied. “As the saying goes, ‘Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.’”

After explaining what the expression meant, I speculated that it was old, probably at least two or three hundred years old.

I was wrong. It turns out the idiom (or proverb, according to some sources) is much, much older. The original Latin phrase noli equi dentes inspicere donate (“Never inspect the teeth of a gifted horse”) was written by St. Jerome more than 1,600 years ago. 

It’s stunning to think that this small piece of wisdom, dating from the fall of the Roman Empire, has persisted to the present day. And not just in English - it’s still used in other European languages, from Dutch (“Een gegeven paard moet je niet in de bek kijken”) to Swedish (“Skåda inte en given häst i munnen”).

Proverbs, idioms, expressions and adages can be found in every language. Some have parallels in English, such as the Russian saying “A sparrow in the hand is better than a cock on the roof.”

Others are more obscure. A Chinese idiom dating from the second century B.C., “Cooking a chicken in a cauldron for stewing an ox” once referred to using a oversized tool for a minor job. It can also refer to assigning a person of great talents to a petty task.

Here are a few from other languages:

• No ver tres en un burro (Spanish for “unable to see 3 on a donkey”): Having bad vision
• Chemsha bongo (Swahili for “to boil the brain”): A vexing puzzle or question
• Inuit: “Once one has been bitten by a bear, life is never again so sweet.”

The border between idiom and superstition is fuzzy. My father reports my grandmother often repeated sayings related to luck. For instance, spilling salt or placing new shoes on a table portended bad fortune. These likely came from her Irish forebears’ folk beliefs. In Taiwan, sayings related to luck and fortune are commonplace, and may be derived from feng shui or local religious practices such as Ghost Month.

Regardless of the origin, it’s fun to use these old sayings in conversation and writing. In an age of apps and AI, it’s refreshing to share nuggets of wisdom and belief that have been part of our shared history for hundreds or even thousands of years.