“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth”

Today’s thought: “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth”

This is an idiom. Idioms are groups of words in a language that have a different meaning than the meaning of the actual words. (Idioms = eigentümliche Wortprägung oder Wortverbindung, deren Gesamtbedeutung sich nicht aus den Einzelbedeutungen der Wörter ableiten lässt)

In this case, the actual WORDS say: Don’t look in a horse’s mouth. But, what the idiom actually means, is that you should not be ungrateful for a gift. You should not find fault with something freely given.

The origin of the idiom comes from the fact, that you can tell a horses’ age from its teeth. So, to look into a horse’s mouth means checking its age. It means that you are trying to find out if the horse is old. That means, you are looking for a problem with the gift.

Dieses Idiom hat eine deutsche Fassung: “Dem geschenkten Gaul schaut man nicht ins Maul”.