I understand the meaning of the saying and the context it’s used in.
What I don’t understand is why you would look a horse (or gift horse) in the MOUTH. What is special about its mouth?
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You can determine age and health of a horse through the teeth, and mouth in general.
So you are gifted a horse. And without thanking you immediately yank the mouth open to see if he’s a quality horse? The horse was a gift, not somehting you bought for your own barn to grow. Than what are you gonna do if the horse ends up older than ideal? Reject a genuine gift because you expected a young horse in his prime, while you are not paying for this horse and it’s an act of kindness? It’s kinda outdated now but back in the day horses played a huge part in society.
So that’s why that phrase means to be judgemental of genuine gifts. Kinda like being dissapointed you got a Kia picanto as a gift from your parents instead of a BMW or Mercedes.
I remember this being one of the questions in my adult autism assessment. I stared at her blankly without an answer when I was asked this. Reading the responses is cracking me up.
Looking at a horses teeth is a way of aging them, so the idea of don’t look a gift horse in the mouth is along the lines of don’t nitpick over the detail of a free offer!
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