What does the expression “The horse hasn’t wallowed yet” mean?
About a task that has not even been started yet, one could say: “Конь не валялся” (“Kon ne valyalsa”) or “The horse hasn’t wallowed yet”. There are several versions regarding the origin of this phrase and not all of them are connected with horses.
There is an assumption that the “horse trail” in the expression appeared, due to the tradition of peasants letting their horses wallow on the ground before starting field work. In this way, a mud crust would form on their backs, which protected them from insects.
But, there is a more prosaic explanation and horses have nothing to do with it. It’s all about felt boots, which were felted starting from the toe or, as it was also called, from the ‘kone’ (‘кон’). The same name was given to the felt base for these shoes. Therefore, if a person had not yet started working on a new pair, it meant that the ‘kone’ (or ‘horse’ in Russian) had not yet been felted. Over time, a soft sign (‘конь’) was added to the word.
