Still wrapping my head around the fact the phrase “Hold Your Horses” is a play on the word Stable…
To be stable.
obsessed w how none of these are the real origin of the phrase
So what are the actual origins? Tell me. GIVE ME THE FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE.
Hold your horses: it’s a very old phrase, found in Book 23 of the Odyssey, in regards to Antilochus’ wild performance at a chariot race. It’s simply a command to not rush into something without thinking, as holding your horses literally keeps them from bolting off.
Break a leg: appears to date to only the 1920s or 30s (earliest attestation in theatre comes from Edna Ferber’s 1939 autobiography A Peculiar Treasure), related to a theatre superstition about avoiding wishing a performer good luck. It might be derived from or parallel a German phrase, “Hals- und Beinbruch” (neck- and leg-fracture), a joking corruption of the Yiddish phrase “hatslokhe un brokhe” (success and blessing), but this isn’t supported by any direct textual evidence. Robert Wilson Lynd stated in a 1921 New Statesman essay that it was a kind of blessing in English horse racing, which really clarifies why it’s particularly the legs.
Be there or be square: a rhyming play on 1940s Jazz community slang. Square, here, originally meant fair and honest- a square deal- back to at least the 16th century, but eventually took on the sense of someone’s who’s a bit of a Melvin in the black community. A square also had a connotation of mainstream whiteness, probably reinforced by squareheads, a derogatory term for Germanic-Americans, and the square cut hair styles of white Americans who weren’t hip to the jazz scene.
