Beat a Dead Horse

In the days when horses provided the power for farms, transport, and industry, flogging a stubborn or exhausted horse was a real, if brutal, method for forcing it back to work. Beating a horse that had actually died achieved nothing at all, an image so obvious it needed little explanation to a 19th-century audience. Samuel Johnson used an early version of the phrase, "to beat a horse that is dead," in his 1755 Dictionary of the English Language. The specific wording "flogging a dead horse" is first recorded in 1859, describing the English politician John Bright growing frustrated with a stalled reform campaign.