Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Hold your horses

Well now, folks, just hang onto those reins and hold your horses.

That phrase sounds like something straight out of old Western movies, right? But horses have been around for a long time. Perhaps "holding" them goes waaaaay back and predates the Old West.

Well...
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... according to The Phrase Finder, to hold your horses, in the sense of "be patient," is indeed a phrase born in the USA, around 1844:

In keeping with its American origin, it originally was written as 'hold your hosses' and it appears in print that way many times from 1844 onwards. In Picayune (New Orleans) September 1844, we have: "Oh, hold your hosses, Squire. There's no use gettin' riled, no how."

If it appears in the newspapers in 1844, you know it was being said for some time before that.

The American Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer nudges it back to 1840, adding "This expression alludes to a driver making horses wait by holding the reins tightly."

Then there's Wikipedia being, well, Wikipedia, suggesting the origin could be earlier. Much earlier:

Literal meaning: comes from when in the 1600s when someone broke a law they would trample them with horses. The person in charge would say "Hold you horses" and then would tie the law breaker on to a piece of wood and lay him on the ground. Then the horses would come and trample him. 

Yikes!!

However, even Wikipedia goes with the first idiomatic use occurring in the US in the 1840s.

So, there you go. You may let your horses run free now.

Photo by Ivy Son from Pexels