I wrote a longer entry in another thread responding to this article, butI think the ra===I think the "race" part of racehorse has to do with drug testing that takes pace at tracks during competition. Immediately after each race, the winning horse and one other selected at random report to the judges' barn and are required to submit a sample.

Pissing's been around a lot longer than horsey drug testing. so, has people's willingness to include it in conversation.

"I do smell all horse-piss; at which my nose is in great indignation." - Shakespeare, "The Tempest, 4. 1"

"The Crystal Eye, alas, was miss'd; And Puss had on her Plumpers piss'd. A Pigeon pick'd her Issue-Peas; And Shock her Tresses fill'd with Fleas." - Swift, "A Beautiful Young Nymph Going To Bed"

Every academic pissant knows that.

Or to go back somewhat further yet -- 2 Kings 18:27 (KJV) "...that they may eat their own dung and drink their own piss...."

Think FS can't get us the Hebrew low down on that?

This was better than the article!

Haha, that's amazing. And proof of the way this phrase is culturally engrained...

I guess it’s just something you always remember….My first kiss…..The day my child was born……That time I had to piss like a racehorse so bad I though my bladder would explode.

Ahhh memories.

DavidSess:

My personal opinion: people say they need to “piss like a racehorse” because of the way it sounds: the endings of “piss,” “race,” and “horse” make a string of consonance that sounds urgent, distressed, and sort of like the hissing stream they’re about let loose.

A "stream of consonance" phrase, you might say.

An echoic of the passed.

Still my favorite explanation for this whole business, offered by an equine science professor who thought the phrase was "poetic." Unfortunately it had to be cut from the Explainer, but I loved it.

Personally, I say it is because I'm hung like one.

I would suggest that if you really want to research a phrase go to one of these sites: wordwizard.com wordorigins.org phrases.org wordsmith.org and worldwidewords.org. If they don't know you will have a tough time finding it anytime soon.

Horses are sensitive, poetic creatures. It's inevitable that humans respond to them similarly.