Chapter Horse. to Horse-shoes of H by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Horse. to Horse-shoes

Horse.
   IN PHRASE AND PROVERB.
   A dark horse. A horse whose merits as a racer are not known to the general public.
   Flogging the dead horse. (See Flogging.)
   Riding the wooden horse. A military punishment now discontinued. It was a flogging-stool.
   I will win the horse or lose the saddle. Neck or nothing; double or quits. Milton makes Satan say, "Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven."
   Latin: "Aut ter sex, aut tres tesserae." (See Ter Sex.) "Au Caesar, aut nullus."
   French: "Tout ou rien." "Je veux risquer le tout pour le tout."
   They cannot draw (or set) horses together. They cannot agree together. The French say, "Nos chiens ne chassent pas ensemble. "
    'Tis a Trojan horse (Latin proverb). A deception, a concealed danger. Thus Cicero says, "Intus, intus, inquam, est equus Trojanus ' (Pro Murena, 78). It was Epeos who made the Trojan horse.
    'Tis a good horse that never stumbles. Everyone has his faults. Every black has its white, and every sweet its sour.

Latin: "Quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus."
Horace: Ars Poetica, 359.
"Humanum est errare."
French: "Il n'y a bon cheval qui ne bronche,"or
"Il n'est si bon cheval qui ne bronche."

   To get upon one's high horse. To give oneself airs. (See High Horse.)
   To set the cart before the horse. (See Cart.)
   When the horse (or steed) is stolen, lock the stable door. The French say: "Apres la mort, le medicine. " Somewhat similar is: "After beef, mustard."
   Working on the dead horse. (See Working.)

Horse Coarse, acrid or pungent, inferior of its kind, rough. "Hoarse" is the Anglo-Saxon has.

Horse-bean The bean usually given to horses for food.

Horse-chestnut If a slip is cut off obliquely close to a joint, it will present a perfect miniature of a horse's hock and foot, shoe and nails. I have cut off numerous specimens. Probably this has given the name horse to the tree. (See Horse-Vetch.)

Horse-faced Having a long, coarse face.

Horse Latitudes A region of calms between 30 and 35 North; so called because ships laden with horses bound to America or the West Indies were often obliged to lighten their freight by casting the horses overboard when calmbound in these latitudes.

"Nothing could have been more delightful than our run into the horse latitudes. Gales and dead calms, terrible thunderstorms and breezes, fair one hour and foul the next, are the characteristics of these parallels. Numbers of horses were exported from the mother country, and it was reckoned that more of the animals died in these ... latitudes than in all the rest of the passage." - Clark Russell: Lady Maud, vol. i. chap. vii. p. 186.

Horse-laugh A coarse, vulgar laugh.

"He plays rough pranks ... and has a big horse-laugh in him when there is a fop to be roasted." - Carlyle: Frederick the Great, vol. i. book iv. chap. ii. p. 305.

Horse Marines (The). There is no such force. The Royal Marines are either artillery or infantry; there are no cavalry marines. To belong to the "Horse Marines" is a joke, meaning an awkward lubberly recruit.

Horse-milliner Properly, one who makes up and supplies decorations for horses.
   A horse-soldier more fit for the toilet than the battle-field. The expression was first used by Rowley in his Ballads of Charitie, but Sir Walter Scott revived it.

"One comes in foreign trashery
Of tinkling chain and spur,
A walking haberdashery
Of feathers, lace, and fur;
In Rowley's antiquated phrase.
Horse milliner of modern days."
Bridal of Triermain, ii. 3.

Horse-mint The pungent mint.

Horse-play Rough play.
   Similarly hoarse, having a rough voice from inflammation of the throat; gorse, a rough, prickly plant; goose-berry, a rough berry; goose-grass, the grass whose leaves are rough with hair, etc.