A saying when someone gives you something useful but you don't like it at all and you would like to have something better for you .
In the past, when buying a horse, people looked to see if it had healthy teeth.
Dad: „I will give you my little car for your birthday.“
Daughter: „But I don’t like it! I’d rather like a big car!“
Dad: „OH, c’mon! Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth!“
meaning if something is free dont find the flaws in it.
one way to tell a horses age is by looking at the wear on his teeth , if someone gives you a horse theres a good chance it is old and you wont get much use out of it.
sam got a bike for christmas , but it wasnt the one he asked for .... "dont look a gift horse in the mouth"
Fogey/fogy /fougi/ sl. (early 18C+, orig. Scot) old-fashioned, stuck-in-the mud.
Person with old fashioned ideas which he is unwilling to change: Come to the disco and stop being such an old fogey!
You think me an old fogeyand an old tory, his thoughtful voice said. I saw three generations since O’Connel’s time. I remember the famine. Do you know that the orange lodges agitated for repeal of the union twenty years before O’Connel did or before the prelates of your communion denounced him as a demagogue? You fenians forget some things. (James Joyce, Ulysses. Penguin Books,1992. p. 38)