straight from the horse's mouth
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Directly from the original or most reliable source
Literally: information from the horse itself
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
They say they'll use the information happy in the knowledge that it's coming straight from the horse's mouth.
You might as well hear it straight from the horse's mouth.’
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “straight from the horse's mouth” mean?
Directly from the original or most reliable source Literally: information from the horse itself
Is “straight from the horse's mouth” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.