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12 EVERYDAY PHRASES YOU DIDN’T KNOW CAME FROM HORSE RACING

By Ellen Gutoskey
May 4, 2022
Jockey Karis Teetan and Romantic Warrior about to win a race at the Queen
Elizabeth II Cup in Hong Kong in April 2022. / (Horse race) Lo Chun Kit/Getty
Images; (Speech bubble) Ajwad Creative/iStock via Getty Images


The English language is full of common phrases coined so long ago that their
original—often literal—meanings have long been forgotten. Gear up for this
year’s Kentucky Derby on May 7 with 12 everyday utterances that came straight
from the horse races.


1. ACROSS THE BOARD

Before across the board referred to everything in a given category, it was used
to describe a bet in which you chose one horse and put equal sums of money into
all three possible lucrative outcomes: winning (first place), placing (first or
second place), and showing (first, second, or third place). Since bookies kept
track of odds on blackboards back in the early 20th century, this type of wager
meant you were literally selecting all the options across the board.




2. GIVE-AND-TAKE

'The Start' by Thomas Rowlandson, 1786. / Heritage Images/GettyImages

As far back as the late 1760s, a “give and take plate” was the prize for a race
in which the playing field was evened by having taller horses carry extra
weight. By the late 1770s, people had already started using it to describe other
situations that called for compromise and fair exchange. The first known mention
of this broader sense comes from Frances Burney’s 1778 novel Evelina: “give and
take is fair in all nations.”


3. HANDS DOWN

These days, hands down usually means “indisputably” or “effortlessly.” When it
originated in the 19th century, the phrase specifically described a horse race
that was won indisputably or effortlessly—so much so that the jockey would
slacken the reins and cross the finish line “with hands down.”


4. RUN FOR YOUR MONEY

Minoru with his owner, King Edward VII (far right), and trainers in 1909. /
Print Collector/GettyImages

If you were a 19th-century race-goer backing a certain horse, you wanted to get
a run for your money—preferably a profitable one, but any run was better than no
run. After all, there’s always a chance that a horse can get withdrawn from the
lineup (or “scratched”) at the last minute because of injury, illness, subpar
racing conditions, or any number of other reasons. Before long, people started
using a run for one’s money outside the racetrack in scenarios where someone or
something proves to be a worthy competitor.


5. AND 6. UNDER THE WIRE AND DOWN TO THE WIRE

Because a wire was sometimes hung above the finish line so judges could more
easily identify the winning horses, people started calling the finish line “the
wire” around the 1870s. If you said a horse came in under the wire, you just
meant that they crossed the finish line; and if you said two horses raced down
to the wire, you meant that they ended the race in close competition. Probably
owing to the dramatic and last-minute nature of horse racing in general, under
the wire and down to the wire both came to describe something finished or
accomplished at the last possible minute.


7. AND 8. HOME STRETCH AND HOME STRAIGHT

If you assumed this entry began as baseball slang, you’re probably not alone—it
makes sense that the last segment of the diamond, from third base to home plate,
would be called the “home stretch” or “home straight.” But it was originally
used in horse racing: It’s the last (straight) leg of the track between the
final corner and the finish line. These days, the final push before the end of
anything—a trip, project, etc.—can be a home stretch.


9. JOCKEY FOR POSITION

Jockeys jockeying for position at the 2021 Kentucky Oaks. / Sarah
Stier/GettyImages

Jockeying for position just means you’re trying to move into a better
position—maybe for a better view at a concert, or for a clearer path to the
finish line in an actual race. The origins of the phrase may seem obvious, since
jockeys angle for better positioning during today’s horse races. But its history
is a little more complicated than that, because the word jockey didn’t always
just refer to racehorse riders. It also described horse dealers, who had a
reputation for cheating, making crooked deals, and generally being
untrustworthy. 

So people started using jockey as a verb that basically meant “to gain an
advantage over someone by tricking them” or “to get something by cheating or
outwitting someone.” According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it was this
sense that gave rise to the phrase jockey for position. In other words, if you
nabbed a better position, the implication was once that you got there on the
backs of those less cunning or more moralistic than you.


10. NECK AND NECK

Neck and neck originally described well-matched horses who didn’t pull ahead of
each other during a race: Their necks stayed even. The earliest known written
instance of the phrase with regard to horses is from 1799, and it almost
immediately got co-opted for other types of races—specifically political ones.
“The contest for Kent is the keenest that has yet been run. The three candidates
are neck and neck,” The Morning Post reported in July 1802.


11. WIN BY A NOSE

Salvator beats Tenny by a nose at New York's Sheepshead Bay Race Track in 1890.
/ Heritage Images/GettyImages

Thanks to those aforementioned long necks, horses’ noses often cross the finish
line before their legs. If the first-place finisher in a 19th-century horse race
eked out a win by a tiny margin, they quite literally only won by a nose. Today,
any kind of close victory can be described as being won by a nose.


12. FAST TRACK

In the mid-19th century, per the OED, a fast track was “a racetrack with a hard
dry surface which enables horses to run at high speed.” A slow track was the
exact opposite: one with a “soft wet surface.” Though slow track did catch on as
a metaphorical phrase, fast track is the more popular of the two, hands down.
Today, a fast track can be any accelerated path, literal or figurative; it’s
even been turned into a verb. Fast-track that report of most hated business
jargon, please.


RELATED TAGS

HOMEMONEYHORSESWORDSLANGUAGEORIGINSNATUREBASEBALLSPORTSLISTS





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