"Driven hard and put away wet". What, are you supposed to dry off the car?
 

"Driven hard and put away wet".

I've heard that term a lot to designate general neglect and abuse of a car.
Why is this even a saying?

What exactly is the opposite of that idiom?
When caught in the rain, are you supposed to towel off your car once you park it in the garage?
That's a nice way to scratch up your paint with all the new dirt everywhere.

And I don't think anyone has ever wiped off the undercarriage with a towel.
They would be put in an insane asylum.

Why is this even a saying? It makes no sense to me.

"Rode hard and put away wet" is the original saying. About the worst thing you can do to a horse - work them up into a good sweat, not allow them to cool down, and stable them.

Back in the day, it referred to a well worn and often rusty cars.
Today, it's more applicable to some women.

This.

Methinks the OP is a sub-30 year old millenial... Not judging - just sayin' SmileWavy

Yep, has nothing to do with cars or women. It's all about horses.

Been to too many bars where that applied to a large percentage of the female clientele. Probably why I stopped going to bars.

Thank you, that makes more sense.
I would imagine if a horse was ridden in the rain, or was sweating profusely, you'd want to brush out his mane.
Put away wet, the horse will look ragged and tangled tomorrow.
While this does not translate literally to cars, it must be used to describe something in ratty appearance.

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-does-rode-hard-and-put-away-wet-mean.htm

Or 99.999% of female online daters.

Yup. Confirmation:

It has nothing to do with appearance, least of all its mane. The very health and well being of the horse is at stake.

Confirmation? Sorry, but not everyone goes to equestrian school. Try leaving your ivory tower sometime.

Easy up there, Sugarwood.

The metabolism of a horse leads me to wonder where the expression "Healthy as a horse" came from.
Imagine you have just had a hard work out and suddenly just sat down without cooling down. It is likely your muscles would cramp.
With a horse the effect can be crippling. Horses worked hard and then put in the barn without adequate cool down and care can be so lame the next day they can hardly walk.
Old horsemen used to call it "Monday morning disease."

I didn't go to equestrian school either but the woman in my life has had horses longer than she has had me.

Best
Les

I have not gone to equestrian school, I don't live in an ivory tower, and I don't play a doctor on TV...

Over time, people tend to accumulate useless information, or information that is no longer relevant, like the putting a horse away wet. As a trivia buff, I find word origins and the origin of phrases to be fascinating. Many of these phrases are still used today, and while the original meanings/implications are no longer relevant, the spirit of their meaning continues.

Speaking of phrases, living in an Ivory Tower has its roots in the Bible:

Here, the phrase implies purity.

Also:
Source: Ivory tower - meaning and origin.

Sadly, literary devices such as simile and metaphor are being replaced with LOLZ, WAZZUP, and ROTFLMAO.

Ok - I'll get off my soapbox now...
-Z-man.

PS: BTW...
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soapbox

Sugarwood, you are not a bad guy but your opinion's and taste in cars betrays you as being a bit younger than the crusty old car guys (I would count you as car guy).

I was born, raised, and still live in unban Los Angeles... we do have affluent area that house horses but I promise you I have never owned a horse.

However the "road hard and put away wet." is known by many of us oldsters as being of equestrian origin.

An as a bible thumper will (good naturedly) callout the Z-man, I was of the belief that "song of Solomon" referred to a relationship between a man and women.

Now...GET OFF MY LAWN!

Yes, horsey origin. These days it's applied to anything that has been used hard and not cared for.

"And I don't think anyone has ever wiped off the undercarriage with a towel.
They would be put in an insane asylum."

Or maybe given a nice award at a concour event. I've seen people on their backs wiping the undercarriage of Porches at 356 Registry events.

Absolutely - in the passage I quoted above, the King was describing the beauty of his bride - and describing how her beauty reflected her purity.

Lawn? You call that patch a weeds a LAWN?!?!? :D

-Z

Wow - Tough crowd...

The definition of rode hard and put away wet used to be considered common knowledge but it is apparently a phrase that has not been passed down to the younger generations.
That's OK, there are a whole lot of things younger people say that I don't comprende.




One of the interns at work asked me what time it was recently. I said half past 9.

He looked at me funny and said what?

I said half past 9.

He gigged and said, what does that mean?

I said nine thirty.
Half past means half an hour after. So half past 9 means nine thirty.
Just like a quarter til means 15 minutes to the hour ....

He said "why don't you just say it right?"

I said good luck in your internship and went about my way.
We're domed.






( yes I speeled it that way on porpoise).

hopefully the original was:

"ridden hard and put away wet."

i dig old sayings. some of the stuff makes no sense!!

like why did people yell "GERONIMO!" when they jumped off of things? :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geronimo_(exclamation)

^^^ OK, I had to read that one, because the kids and I are known to yell "Geronimo" when making cannonballs into the pool.