Idioms: tight spots and moves

An idiom often keeps alive a meaning its key word has lost almost everywhere else, and die Hinterhand shows the split cleanly. In the stable it is the hindquarters of a horse, the back legs that drive it forward, just as die Vorhand is the front. At the card table it is the seat that comes last in the order of play, the player who has seen what the others did before having to decide. The idiom comes from the table, not the stable: whoever has something in der Hinterhand is holding it back until the others have committed themselves, which is why a union keeps an offer there for the next round of talks. Read it with the horse in mind, or as « behind one’s back », and a patient reserve turns into something furtive. The word is the same; the sense that survives in the phrase is the one from the cards.