Where did the saying, “…horse of a different color” come from?
I ran across a few places that all tended to have the same basic definition. The expression a horse of a different color is believed to have originated – at least in print – with Shakespeare, who used the phrase “a horse of the same colour” in his play Twelfth Night to indicate agreement between ideas. By the late eighteenth century, the expression was appearing in its modern form, meaning a situation or matter different from the one originally expected. Had Shakespeare lived long enough to witness the explosion of colors in the modern Thoroughbred, he might have coined another phrase or two. While bay, chestnut, brown, black, and gray remain the breed’s standard colors, fanciers of unusually colored Thoroughbreds can now find paints, buckskins, cremellos, palominos, and whites to round out the equine palette. Not all of these colors are as yet recognized by The Jockey Club, but they are becoming more widely recognized among breeders and fans, particularly in sport horse circles. The f
