I haven't read the entire thread, but have to add that the consonance and alliteration are even more pleasing when you add the one indespensible word: Russian.

"I've gotta piss like a Russian racehorse!" has it all.

My grandfather was a horse trainer - trotters and pacers. He used the saying all the time, so its at least 50 years I've heard it used. I don't know if it's fast and furious, as some writers have said, or it just means 'I really need to pee'. Makes old fashioned horse sense, though, that it has something to do with the relative strength and duration of the stream. Could be a load of horsefeathers, though. Horsefeathers - that's one no one seems to know the etymology of. And 'horse sense'? In my time around them I've seen quite a few that have no sense at all.

I work with horses, and most I'm around--not just thoroughbreds-- can be 'shy' about doing it. I'll get them up in the night, and like a human, they will have to go. I have to turn my back and pretend I'm not paying attention, maybe even move out their view, and they'll go.

But we've trained them not to go anywhere but the stall. Only if they're in complete distress would a horse pee in the ring or groomstall. Humans may have created the shy bladder issue.

As for the 'peeing like a race horse,' horses usually have to pee after they've been out exercising. I wonder if since racing is such a exertion, racers pee more?

I've heard the phrase "piss like a racehorse" since I was very young. I was never around horses, so I just had to piece the meaning of it together with whatever else I heard then.

In the 80s, I always heard it as "piss like a Russian racehorse." I assumed that it had some derogatory meaning toward our Cold War enemies. I mixed that with tales about the Soviets performing chemical and biological experiments on their soldiers and figured that it had something to do with testing their urine as part of the experiments.

That assumption was reinforced when the Olympics started testing athlete's urine after East Germany started producing manly-looking female athletes and freakishly big power lifters. As steriods became a bigger issue in all sports, my assumption that race horses where tested for steriod became stronger. Again: Piss--urine testing, Race--drug testing, Horse--animal testing; it made sense to me.

Seeing a high-school weight-lifter inject himself with steriods from a vial that said "horse [steriods], not for humans," solidified that assumption in my mind; until today, when I read the real reason in The Explainer (not an uncommon experience).

Still, my end-assumption was not too far off, given the path I took to reach it. Performance-enhancing drugs have some relationship to the saying, even if the actual drugs are diuretics instead of steriods. In any case, my early suburban diet of negative stereotypes, pop culture, and network sports almost got me up to speed with my more-well off or more rural friends, even though I've seen about as many horses as elephants

Well the piss like a Russian racehorse plays into the idea that the sound of the expression is what counts. I think that's right. You would never hear urinate like a racehorse.

Horse racing has been around forever, but it was only in the early 1930s that it became a popular sport (to raise money for local governments during the depression like lotteries and casinos today). Also at that time, horses would be something someone would see at a race track since cars has completely replaced them on the roads. So for most people, all horses were race horses unless they lived on a farm.

There is a similar expression that goes f*** like a ******** that may be contemporaneous.

Might be making an assumption about that word.LOL

lasix is illegal but is often given to race horses to reduce swelling from injuries (race horses often are routinely injured in the joy of their imposed sport (aren't anglo saxon's fun?) and...(da da da da ta da!) it causes horses to piss...a whole bunch!

I don’t know, but I once saw a cartoon where they were advertising toilets and guaranteed them to be race horse tested.

Tested or tasted?

I have also heard the expression for as long as I can recall (certainly well more than the last 50 years) and have heard it on several continents so it does not seem to be particularly regional.

I had never heard the "russian racehorse" variant, but it does seem to support the assumption that it is the consonance that drives that particular expression.

So far as I can tell, the expression does not seem to have much relationship to horse racing in particular -- at least the people I hear using it do not.

I'd never heard the term until my father-in-law was hospitalized because his normal diuretic medicine was not keeping up with his fluid retention. One of the nurses told him that they'd soon have him "peeing like a Russian race horse." I like the extra bit of ethnic detail for my imagination to work with, even though I have no idea if there is even is such a thing as a Russian race horse! ;--)

It doesn't describe the action of pissing it describes the terrible need to piss...

gotta joke for you from my younger days...

you take a matchbook and remove three matches;

line them up in a row;

place the matchbook cover as a tent over the middle match;

the cover is a cathouse (brothel)

now, what are the nationalities of the three matches?

the front match is Finnish

the real match is Russian

and the match under the cover?

Himalayan

Tested.

If it was tasted it would have had to have been Oh-de-toilet and racey ho's, not the other way around.

G

This thread's beginning to to look like it belongs on "Faith Based."