subs. (common).—1. Work, the wages for which have been paid in advance; by implication, distasteful, or thankless labor. Fr., la bijouterie. TO PULL THE DEAD HORSE = to work for wages already paid. [Seamen, on signing articles, sometimes get pay in advance, and they celebrate the term of the period thus paid for by dragging a canvas horse, stuffed with straw, round the deck and dropping him into the sea amidst cheers.] Fr., manger du salé (to eat salt pork).
1651. CARTWRIGHT, The Siege. Ply. Now you’l wish I know, you ne’r might wear Foul linnen more, never be lowzy agen, Nor ly perdue with the fat sutlers wife In the provoking vertue of DEAD HORSE, Your dear delights, and rare camp pleasures.
1669. The Nicker Nicked, in Harleian Miscellany (ed. PARK), II., 110. Sir Humphry Foster had lost the greatest part of his estate, and then (playing, as it is said, for a DEAD HORSE) did, by happy fortune, recover it again.
1824. JOHN WADE (‘Thomas Fielding’), Select Proverbs, p. 148, s.v.
1857. Notes and Queries, 2 S., iv., p. 192. A workman ‘horses’ it when he charges for more in his week’s work than he has really done. Of course he has so much unprofitable work to get through in the ensuing week, which is called DEAD HORSE.
2. (West Indian).—A shooting star. Among Jamaican negroes the spirits of horses that have fallen over precipices are thought to re-appear in this form.
TO FLOG THE DEAD HORSE, verb. phr. (common).—To work to no purpose; to dissipate one’s energy in vain; to make ‘much ado about nothing.’
1872. Globe, 1 Aug. ‘In the House,’ For full twenty minutes by the clock the Premier … might be said to have rehearsed that particularly lively operation known as FLOGGING A DEAD HORSE.
