Hold Your Horses - Use

Use

The saying is typically used when someone is rushing into something. It is often combined with linked idioms such as, cool your jets, or look before you leap. However it also has a more literal meaning and in certain circumstances is the preferred idiom to use. "Hold your horses" literally means to keep your horse (or horses) still, which would be used when horse riding, or driving a horse-drawn vehicle. Thus it is very easy for someone without previously hearing the expression to understand its meaning. Someone is to wait for a moment. It is usually followed up with an explanation to demonstrate why they should wait. For example, "Hold your horses, you haven't thought about this yet."

If someone tells you to hold your horses, you are doing something too fast and they would like you to slow down.

ORIGINS states these origins:

• The term originated from the artillery.
• A 19th century USA origin: 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."

  ("Hoss" is a US slang term for horse, which was certainly known by 1844, as in David Humphreys' The Yankey in England, 1815: "The boys..see a ghost in the form of a white hoss; and an Indian in every black stump."

• In Chatelaine, 1939, the modern spelling arises: "Hold your horses, dear."
• In 1943 there is a more descriptive use, in Hunt and Pringle's Service Slang: "Hold your horses, hold the job until further orders. (comes from the Artillery)"
• In Book 23 of "The Iliad", Homer writes "Hold your horses!" when referring to Antilochus driving like a maniac in a chariot race that Achilles initiates in the funeral games for Patroclus.