Grayhound, subs. (general).—1. A fast Atlantic liner; one especially built for speed. Also ocean grayhound.
1887. Scientific American, vol. LVI., 2. They [ships] are built in the strongest possible manner, and are so swift of foot, as to have already become formidable rivals to the English grey hound.
2. (Cambridge University).—An obsolete name for a member of Clare College; a clarian.
1889. Whibley, Cap and Gown, xxviii. The members of Clare … were called grayhounds.
Gray-mare, subs. (common).—A wife; specifically one who wears the breeches (q.v.). [From the proverb, ‘The gray mare is the better horse’ = the wife is master: a tradition, perhaps, from the time when priests were forbidden to carry arms or ride on a male horse: Non enim licuerat pontificem sacrorum vel arma ferre, vel praeter quam in equâ equitare.—Beda, Hist. Eccl. ii., 13. Fr., mariage d’epervier = a hawk’s marriage: the female hawk being the larger and stronger bird. Lord Macaulay’s explanation (quot. 1849) is the merest guess-work.]
1546. John Haywood, Proverbs [Sharman’s reprint, 1874]. She is (quoth he) bent to force you perforce, To know that the grey mare is the better horse.
1550. A Treatyse, Shewing and Declaring the Pryde and Abuse of Women Now a Dayes (in Hazlitt’s Early Popular Poetry, iv., 237). What! shall the graye mayre be the better horse, And be wanton styll at home?
1605. Camden, Remains Concerning Britain [ed. 1870, p. 332]. In list of proverbs. (Is said to be the earliest in English.)
1670. Ray, Proverbs, s.v.
1698–1750. Ward, London Spy, part II., p. 40. Another as dull as if the grey mare was the better Horse; and deny’d him Enterance for keeping late Hours.