À cheval donné on ne regarde pas les dents
Meaning: Do not find fault with a gift.
Language: French
Literally: One does not look at the teeth of a given horse
Category: Animals
Origin: A horse's age is judged by its teeth, so inspecting them is pricing an animal you were given for nothing. The saying is old and widespread — Latin has noli equi dentes inspicere donati — and English keeps it as not looking a gift horse in the mouth.
More idioms — Animals
- Monter sur ses grands chevaux — To take offense and react with indignant superiority.
- Un cheval de Troie — A gift or arrangement that conceals a hostile purpose.
- C'est le chien de Jean de Nivelle — Said of someone who makes himself scarce precisely when he is called.
- Les chiens ne font pas des chats — Children inevitably resemble their parents.
- Les chiens aboient et la caravane passe — Criticism from bystanders does not stop those who are getting on with it.
- Ne pas attacher son chien avec des saucisses — To be extremely tight-fisted.
More French idioms
- Un temps de chien — Filthy, miserable weather.
- Mettre les bouchées doubles — To work twice as hard in order to catch up.
- La dive bouteille — Wine, treated with mock reverence.
- Boire le calice jusqu'à la lie — To endure an ordeal all the way to its most humiliating end.
- La cerise sur le gâteau — A final touch that completes something already good — often said sarcastically of a last…
- Ni chair ni poisson — Neither one thing nor the other; impossible to classify.
From our proverbs
- Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind — Reckless or harmful actions return with amplified destructive consequences, not proportio…
- Squeaky wheels get oiled — Complaints and attention-seeking, not quiet suffering, prompt others to address your need…
- Success has many fathers, failure is an orphan — Kennedy in the context of the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion (1961).
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