Word.ws English Dictionary

buy the same horse twice

UK/ˌbaɪ ðə seɪm hɔːs ˈtwaɪs/US/ˌbaɪ ðə ˌseɪm hoɹs ˈtwaɪs/

buy the same horse twice proverb: (in a negotiation) To trade or make concessions for something that has already been agreed upon.

Proverb

buy the same horse twice

  1. (US) (in a negotiation) To trade or make concessions for something that has already been agreed upon.
    • We won't buy the same horse twice just to finalize this deal.
    • “There was an expression we used at the embassy at the timethat trading with the Russians you had to buy the same horse twice,” Harriman recalled. […] He agreed that the whole negotiation we had just completed at Yalta would have to be developed again from the ground up. We had established nothing...1975, Elie Abel, W. Averell Harriman, Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 1941-1946, New York: Random House

Examples of buy the same horse twice in a sentence

  • As former secretary of defence Bob Gates has said, we won't buy the same horse twice.2013 March 12, Chris McGreal, “US dismissive of 'bellicose rhetoric' after North Korea nullifies armistice”, in Alan Rusbridger, editor...
  • Picking up on an American term of art, he said he would not “buy the same horse twice.”2019 September 23, David E. Sanger, Farnaz Fassihi, “A Year Later, Iran Finds Evaporating Sympathy at the U.N.”, in The New York Times, New...

Origin of buy the same horse twice

Perhaps alluding to the practice whereby a seller tricks a former owner into repurchasing a previously sold horse, often under disadvantageous terms.

Questions about buy the same horse twice

What does buy the same horse twice mean?
Buy the same horse twice means (in a negotiation) To trade or make concessions for something that has already been agreed upon.
How do you use buy the same horse twice in a sentence?
As former secretary of defence Bob Gates has said, we won't buy the same horse twice.
What part of speech is buy the same horse twice?
Buy the same horse twice is a proverb.
How do you pronounce buy the same horse twice?
Buy the same horse twice is pronounced /ˌbaɪ ðə seɪm hɔːs ˈtwaɪs/ (UK).

Words near buy the same horse twice in the dictionary

  1. buy the rack
  2. buy the rights
  3. buy the rumor
  4. buy the rumor, sell the fact
  5. buy the rumor, sell the news
  6. buy the same horse twice
  7. buy time
  8. buy to let
  9. buy up
  10. buy when it snows and sell when it goes
  11. buy when it snows, sell when it goes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: buy the same horse twice (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “buy the same horse twice.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/buy_the_same_horse_twice. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.