Talk:I could eat a horse

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I could eat a horse

Readily understood if one knows human nature and the meaning of (deprecated template usage) could. Possibly useful for machines that don't know human nature. Our translators do seem to miss the point, though. (The point is not that one is hungry like a horse (or a wolf).) DCDuring TALK 16:39, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't see any point-missing in translations. The point is that one is very hungry: so hungry that one could eat a horse, or so hungry that one is as hungry as a wolf. I'd assume that some languages simply use a different metaphor to describe a bi-ig hunger. Nevertheless, I'm not going to miss this entry. --Hekaheka 20:03, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, delete per nom.​—msh210℠ 17:25, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Human nature is to eat w:horse meat; part of the idiomatic structure of this phrase is the fact that most of its speakers consider horse a meat to be eaten only in desperate circumstances, an opinion which is not shared by much of humanity.--Prosfilaes 17:50, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

I always understood it, perhaps erroneously, as deriving from the fact that a horse is big. Any way to determine which etymology is correct? In any event, how does either etymology make this phrase idiomatic?​—msh210℠ 17:54, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

This phrase does seem to have some merit, but... Hmm. I'll shut up. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:01, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

I suspect you'd have to look it up in a good reference book. Online references don't give a solid etymology, though they do reveal that other books, like the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary, do include it. If it were merely that a horse is big, I would expect it to be more in the vein of less idiomatic phrases like "I could eat a whole pizza all by myself" or even "I could eat a whole cow" that include emphasis on the quantity and something that's usually eaten. Google seems to like "I could eat a scabby horse", which puts emphasis on the edibility, and The concise new Partridge dictionary of slang and unconventional English lists "could eat the hind leg off a donkey" and "could eat a horse and chase the rider/jockey" as variants, which indicates that edibility does matter. The more it means I could eat something as disgusting as horse, the more likely it's being used by someone who eats horse in a sense that's clearly not SoP.--Prosfilaes 18:32, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

I like your analysis, but is there any significant percentage of anglophones who eat horse and use this expression? If not, I don't think this argument for idiomaticity holds water.​—msh210℠ 19:23, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

An arguments for the quantity of meat rather than its quality's being the referent is the use of a: why not "eat horse"?​—msh210℠ 18:07, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Seem to be hits for "I could eat a cow", "I could eat a bull", "I could eat an ox", a few for deer, a few for chicken (though some are more than one chicken), some for "house" some for "elephant", none for "giraffe" or "bungalow", a few for "hippopotamus". I conclude there is nothing particularly special about the choice of "horse"; which would imply the phrase isn't too special either. delete Conrad.Irwin 18:06, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

On Google Books, there's 684 hits for I could eat a horse, as opposed to 209 for I could eat a cow, and negligible counts for the others. That's not a huge lead for horse, but I think some of the references do indicate it's special: "I'll Bet You Could Eat a Horse! Hungry? Naturally! Please don't eat a horse. Anything else is okay." (from Be a Perfect Person in Just Three Days‎) or '"I could eat a horse." "A horse?" Mitsuo asked. "Do Americans eat horses?" "It's an expression, Mitsuo. But I could eat a small pig."' (from Pacific Crossing) or '"I could eat a horse." "That's a vulgar expression, Mary. Please refrain from using it." "A pony then I could eat a pony." Richard laughed with Mary[...]' (from The Heir) or '"I could eat a cow," Nita said, suspecting that in this household it would be wiser not to offer to eat horses.' (From A Wizard Abroad).--Prosfilaes 18:32, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Keep. --Yair rand 18:34, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

It's such a common collocation. I think this could be really good as a Phrasebook entry. Plus the translations are useful too. Keep. Tooironic 19:44, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

But the existing translations miss the point. It's a metaphor about one's appetite at a time, not one's characteristic tendency to eat voraciously. When we provide entries that are not in many other references we seem to lose the ability to check our work against other sources.

• I could easily be convinced by three citations that indicated that the metaphor, as used in countries where English is the main language, was about the the specific nature of what was being eaten rather than the quantity. But the citations offered don't quite convince me. The first one illustrates that the choice of food animals of large size might be culturally dependent. The second shows nothing about the nature of horses being the issue rather than the vulgar origin of the expression. The last makes we wonder whether the household had equestrians in it. IOW, restrictions on the use of the word derived from its possible inappropriateness in a specific micro-context is not evidence on the point at issue. DCDuring TALK 23:32, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

DCDuring, when you say 'readily decodable' it depends how good you are at decoding. I'm sure the first time I heard this as a child I didn't understand it, but I probably just asked my parents. The only reason I'm not saying is the awkwardness of the 'can' issue, 'can' being a defective verb. Mglovesfun (talk) 23:42, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

This does get to the all-important point of who are included in the set of target users of en.wikt. College-students and older? What level of English knowledge? What cultural knowledge? As to pragmatic considerations, some folks don't ever seem to get a good perspective on what others might be thinking or trying to accomplish so I'm not sure what we can assume. DCDuring TALK 00:16, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

I'd say that everybody is included in the set of target users. Even those who don't know any English (I sometimes look at FL Wiktionaries out of curiosity, and would assume that non-English speakers might too) --Rising Sun talk? 10:52, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Quite unhelpful. Do we include people without access to the internet, to computers? People with no knowledge of English? People whose internet devices don't support Java? The blind? People who don't read IPA? People with knowledge only of pidgin English? People with an English vocabulary of fewer than one thousand words? People don't know how to use dictionaries? People with IQs below 70? DCDuring TALK 10:52, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Keep: figurative rather than literal; not clear when used alone without the larger phrase "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse". --Dan Polansky 12:51, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

A note on translations: I think translators do get the point. They are translating the meaning of the phrase, not the words of the phrase. In Czech, the translation would be "mám hlad jako vlk" or better in the infinitive "mít hlad jako vlk", which is word-for-word in English "to have as big a hunger as wolf has", or, in plain English, "to be very hungry", in the first person "I am very hungry", which is what is meant by "I could eat a horse".

The definition has to read "I am very hungry" instead of "very hungry", though. The phrase belongs to the category for English sentences, where it is indeed located. --Dan Polansky 13:00, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

The entry is of course not even in lemma form.

The translations are not outright wrong, but low in quality. They miss the emphasis on the size of the amount for which one hungers vs. the intensity of hunger or one's behavior. It is inevitable that attempting to pursue phrases rather than word requires more and more care in definition because there is more structure and meaning (and more potential for multiple interpretations). And including phrases that few references have makes the work of quality control all the harder.

I don't even see how a conditional could be deemed figurative. If it can, then we have regressed past compositional metaphor in terms of what we include. Consider "I could kill him", a rather common colloquial collocation. Do we need to include it? Is there any hyperbole that we should not include for the convenience of a mechanical approach to translation, rather than respecting the role of the listener, reader, or translator in constructing meaning based on actual understanding of the language? DCDuring TALK 13:24, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

can eat a horse sounds wrong, could eat a horse with redirects from the pronoun forms seems by far the best option. I still see merit in this entry. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:29, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Keep. Idiomatic. --Anatoli 07:51, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Keep. It is a set, idiomatic phrase, and variations such as I could eat a chicken or a house are either SoP’s, misstatementes, or varied for humorous effect. It’s like sleeping like a log, having to piss like a racehorse, etc. You may hear someone say he slept like a racehorse or needs to piss like a witch’s titty, but it’s the variations that we don’t need...we should keep the original idiomatic phrase. —Stephen 08:10, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Move to lemma form "could eat a horse" ("you said you could eat a horse", "I/he could have eaten a horse", etc ) OR delay any possible deletion pending completion of Phrasebook CFI. DCDuring TALK 10:57, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

This is a very widely-used idiom. Surely it should be kept. BedfordLibrary 15:12, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

kept -- Prince Kassad 17:36, 4 August 2010 (UTC)