admiralty, get off your high horse. Trump Gets Potential Financial Lifeline as Media Merger Is Approved...raises his wealth by billions and provides him with a potential source of cash to pay his mounting legal bills.

Trump Gets Potential Financial Lifeline as Media Merger Is Approved

The merger of Donald Trump’s social media company with a cash-rich shell company raises his wealth by billions and provides him with a potential source of cash to pay his mounting legal bills.

Government leases historic Admiralty Arch

26 October 2012
The Government has leased for 99 years London's landmark Admiralty Arch to Prime Investors Capital Limited (PIC), Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office, announced today. The deal will raise £60 million for taxpayers and marks the beginning of one of the largest and most exciting restoration projects in recent years.
London-based PIC were selected following a competitive bid process. They have assembled a team of British specialist companies and consultants with an extensive track record of working with historic properties to undertake the sensitive restoration of Admiralty Arch to the designs of its original

admiralty[ad・mi・ral・ty]

 

• 発音記号[ǽdmərəlti]
• 
  

[名]

1 [U]admiralの職［権限］.

2 ((英))((the A-))海軍本部；((もと))海軍省（の建物）（((米))the Department of the Navy）

the Board of Admiralty
海軍本部委員会

the First Lord of the Admiralty
海軍大臣.

3 海事審判所

the Court of Admiralty
海事裁判所.

4 [U]海事法.

5 [U]制海権.

get off your high horse

Fig. to become humble; to be less haughty. It's about time that you got down off your high horse. Would you get off your high horse and talk to me? .


Meaning
A request to someone to stop behaving in a haughty and self-righteous manner.
Origin
'High' has long been a synonym for 'powerful'; 'remote from the common people'. This usage isn't limited to being on one's 'high horse' but has also persisted in terms like 'high and mighty', 'high-handed' and 'high finance' and in job titles like 'high commissioner'.
When we now say that people are on their high horse we are implying a criticism of their haughtiness. The first riders of high horses didn't see it that way; they were very ready to assume a proud and commanding position, indeed that was the very reason they had mounted the said horse in the first place. The first references to high horses were literal ones; 'high' horses were large or, as they were often known in mediaeval England, 'great' horses. John Wyclif wrote of them in English Works, circa 1380:

Ye emperour... made hym & his cardenals ride in reed on hye ors.

Mediaeval soldiers and political leaders bolstered their claims to supremacy by appearing in public in the full regalia of power and mounted on large and expensive horses and, in sculptural form at least, presented themselves as larger than life.
The combination of the imagery of being high off the ground when mounted on a great war charger, looking down one's nose at the common herd, and also being a holder of high office made it intuitive for the term 'on one's high horse' to come to mean 'superior and untouchable'.
By the 18th century, the use of such visual aids was diminishing and the expression 'mounting one's high horse' migrated from a literal to a figurative usage. In 1782, Admiral Sir Thomas Pasley recorded his Private Sea Journals. These have ultimately failed to live up to their name as, in 1931, they were published by his great, great great grandson:

"Whether Sir George will mount his high Horse or be over-civil to Admiral Pigot seems even to be a doubt with himself".

Deference to people in positions of power has diminished over the years and we tend nowadays to mock high and mighty people as being 'on their high horse' when they affect a superior and disdainful manner - the term is now rarely used for people who actually are powerful and remote.