FYI: To pull in your horns is to calm down, and to lower your ambitions. You may think this colloquialism began with bulls, but that’s actually not the case, according to The Phrase Finder…
You might think that warning someone who had overreached themselves in some dynamic enterprise to ‘pull their horns in’ was a reference to some pugnacious horned creature, maybe a bull or a rhinoceros. In fact, the creature in question is the unassuming garden snail. The retractable tentacles on which a snail’s eyes are located are known as horns, and these are pulled in whenever the mollusc is threatened.
Likewise, the date of origin of what has the sound of a fairly recent colloquialism, is not what might be expected. Snails were spoken of as ‘pulling their horns in’ as early as the 14th century. An example of that is found in this extract from the Anglo-Norman romantic poem, Richard, Coer De Lyon:
Regards,
Ted
https://thereformedbroker.com/2019/01/22/pulling-in-their-horns/
