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word choice - Does one"drive" a motorcycle or"ride" it? - English ...
2. I would use"drive" to describe operating most machines or motorized vehicles. You can drive a car, bus, truck, motorcycle, tractor."Ride" would be necessary for bicycles, horses, donkeys and very large dogs. That being said, the term"cattle drive" is a good example of the word's usage aside from the riding/driving meaning.
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Origin of the expression"to run roughshod over someone"
The original literal meaning of “to ride roughshod” was far more brutal. In the 17th century, a horse that was “roughshod” was shod with horseshoes with the nailheads, or sometimes metal points, projecting from the bottom of the shoe. This gave the horse better traction on slippery ground or ice.
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etymology - Why is"gee-gee" slang for"horse"? - English Language ...
Irish farmers, including my ancestors, settled in the Ottawa Valley, Canada, in the 19th century. They brought the term Gee-Gee with them from the British Isles. They used it to refer to their big farm horses, as well as race horses. The colours of the University of Ottawa are Garnet and Grey, or GG for short.
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What would you call this fenced training area for horses?
This means it is not a paddock, which is an ordinary field that can be used for training, or a corral, which is a fenced area where horses are kept before being transported (or, of course, where John Wayne turned his horse out while he had a drink in the saloon: perhaps some American contributor can say if this is still in use).
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What is an alternative (more positive) analogy to"beating a dead horse"?
OP could always consider making use of ELU terminology - you get a Necromancer badge for answering a question more than 60 days later with score of 5 or more, which surely implies skill in"raising the dead [horse]", rather than beating/flogging it.
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What does"ride on" mean in the following context?
"Riding on" is an idiom for qualifying what risk a person is taking by either doing or not doing something, or saying or not saying something. For example, if you place great importance on, say, passing a crucial examination in school, you could say that you have a great deal riding on passing the exam.
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Why"horseback riding" and not simply"horse riding"?
British English Horseback riding vs horse riding. Now look at the American English corpus: American English Horseback riding vs horse riding. In British English the two expressions were roughly equally frequent until 20 or 30 years ago, when the"back" variant rapidly became four times more frequent.
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meaning - Don't look a gift-horse in the mouth - English Language ...
2. It is rude to be critical of a gift. Traditionally, one checks the health of a horse by examining its mouth. (Serial numbers are often tattooed on the inner lip of a horse, for tracking reasons, too.) Therefore, looking a gift horse in the mouth means you are critiquing the quality of the horse given to you.
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What is the origin of the phrase"it's a horse apiece"?
A similar phrase,"horse and horse," dates back to at least 1846. According to DARE, the logic of"a horse apiece" may come from an old dice game called"horse" in which two players who have each lost a turn are said to be"a horse apiece." Or it may just be a variant of"horse and horse," describing two horses racing neck-and-neck down a ...
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meaning - What's the origin and reasoning behind the phrase,"I've got ...
The American Heros channel on TV stated that President U.S. Grant as an 11 yr. old boy rode a bucking horse as a challenge in a circus. No one else could stay on the horse and when he managed to do so the circus owner provided the additional difficulty of also placing a monkey on U.S. Grant's back while riding the horse.
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