Red Herrings & White Elephants by Albert Jack

October 6th 2004


Straight from the Horse's Mouth

Straight From The Horses Mouth is a term used to describe accurate and reliable information. In bygone days a horse was a valuable commodity and there were very few ways of reliably assessing a horse's age before buying one. Everybody feared spending good money on an old horse, with very little work left in it, but one of the better ways of reassurance was to look at the teeth of the animal and find out how far they had worn, or how far its gums had receded, to determine the age of a nag. Therefore a prospective buyer could then be given the accurate age of an animal and might ask 'Is that from the horses mouth?'