Joshua Meinert TS #6

Idioms are a troubling thing to learn because they derive from the culture of the language. Today I showed him the phrase “hold your horses.” As a native speaker, I’ve understood for a long time this phrase to mean “be patient.” I walked him through the imagery I see when I think about this phrase. I imagine horses wanting to gallop and be free and the owner needing to tie them to a post while he enters a saloon so they do not get away. I do not know if the origin of the phrase is the wild west but that is what I think of as a native speaker.