hold your horses
idiom

- used to tell someone to stop and consider carefully their decision or opinion about something

Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary

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ORIGIN

In the old days of horse racing, the races were especially difficult to get started. The horses, feeling the nervousness of the inexperienced riders, were constantly breaking across the start-line and had to be called back. The earliest reference in print goes back to 1844.

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SYNONYMS

be patient, bide your time, don’t be in such a hurry, hang, hang fire, hang onto your hat, hold everything, hold on, hold your fire, HOLD YOUR HORSES, kick your heels, lie low, mark time, not so fast, play the waiting game, sit tight, stand by, sweat it out, twiddle your thumbs, wait in the wings

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HORSE IDIOMS

- Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth = don’t question the value of a gift

- You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink = you can make it easy for someone to do something, but you cannot force them to do i

- On his high horse = an arrogant mood or attitude

- She’s a dark horse = a person who keeps their interests and ideas secret, especially someone who has a surprising ability or skill

- Beat a dead horse = to continue fighting a battle that has been won, or to argue a point that has been settled

- Change horses in midstream = to make new plans in an activity that has already begun

- Put the cart before the horse = to put or do things in the wrong order

- Straight from the horse’s mouth = to obtain information directly from the source

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CLEVER HANS

"Der Kluge Hans" was a horse that was claimed to have performed arithmetic and other intellectual tasks. After a formal investigation in 1907, psychologist Oskar Pfungst demonstrated that the horse was not actually performing these mental tasks, but was responding directly to involuntary cues in the body language of the human trainer, who was entirely unaware that he was providing such cues.

In honour of Pfungst’s study, the phenomenon of observer-expectancy in animal cognition has since been named “The Clever Hans Effect“.

From: “Berlin’s Wonderful Horse; He Can Do Almost Everything but Talk - The New York Times (4 September 1904)

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PRACTICE OWAD in a conversation, say something like:

“HOLD YOUR HORSES! We need to think this through before making a final decision.”

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Paul Smith