Where did the phrase "raining cats and dogs" come from?
149800
It is my understanding that in time gone by and I forget the country, but the people lived in huts. And the roofs to these huts were made from grass. (straw) and during colder weather cats as well as dogs would seek warmth from this. Well when it rained naturally the straw would get wet and at times the weight of all the cats and dogs on the roof would cause them to fall through. Hence the saying its raining cats and dogs.
836667
Here goes- take your pick:\n\n1.It comes from mythology. Witches, who often took the form of their familiars - cats, are supposed to have ridden the wind. Dogs and wolves were attendants to Odin, the god of storms and sailors associated them with rain. Well, some evidence would be nice. There doesn't appear to be any to support this notion.\n\n\n2.Cats and dogs were supposed to be washed from roofs during heavy weather. This is a widely repeated tale. It got a lease of life with the message "Life in the 1500s", which began circulating on the Internet in 1999. Here's the relevant part of that:\n\nI'll describe their houses a little. You've heard of thatch roofs, well that's all they were. Thick straw, piled high, with no wood underneath. They were the only place for the little animals to get warm. So all the pets; dogs, cats and other small animals, mice, rats, bugs, all lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery so sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Thus the saying, "it's raining cats and dogs."\n\nThis is nonsense of course. It hardly needs debunking, but, lest there be any doubt... \n\nDogs lived in thatched roofs? No, of course they didn't. Even accepting that mad idea, for them to have slipped off when it rained they would have needed to be on the outside - hardly the place an animal would head for to shelter from bad weather.\n\n\n3.The phrase is supposed to have originated in England in the 17th century when city streets were filthy and heavy rain would occasionally carry along dead animals. \n\nThe idea that seeing dead cats and dogs floating by in storms would cause people to coin this phrase is just about believable. People may not have actually thought the animals had come from the sky, but might have made up the phrase to suit the occasion. \n\n\n4.Another suggestion is that it comes from a version of the French word, catadoupe, meaning waterfall. \n\nWell, again. No evidence. If the phrase were 'raining cats' or if there also existed a French word, dogadoupe we might be going somewhere with this one. As there isn't let's pass this by.
88320
Some more about cats:\n\n\n    * be like a cat on a hot tin roof\n    * be the cat's whiskers\n    * fight like cat and dog\n    * Has the cat got your tongue?\n    * let the cat out of the bag\n    * like the cat that got the cream\n    * Look what the cat's dragged in!\n    * look like something the cat brought/dragged in\n    * play cat and mouse\n    * put/set the cat among the pigeons\n    * When/While the cat's away (the mice will play).\n    * not have a cat in hell's chance\n    * Curiosity killed the cat.\n    * a fat cat\n    * a grin like a Cheshire cat\n    * There's more than one way to skin a cat.\n    * not room to swing a cat\n    * a scaredy-cat\n    * see which way the cat jumps\n\nAnd dogs too:\n\n    * call off the dogs\n    * go to the dogs\n    * throw sb to the dogs\n    * let sleeping dogs lie\n    * fight like cat and dog\n    * be done like a (dog's) dinner\n    * the dog days\n    * dog eat dog\n    * a dog and pony show\n    * a dog in the manger\n    * be like a dog with two tails\n    * a dog's breakfast/dinner\n    * done up/dressed up like a dog's dinner\n    * Every dog has its day.\n    * It's a dog's life.\n    * not have a dog's chance\n    * put on the dog\n    * Why keep a dog and bark yourself?\n    * dog-tired\n    * the hair of the dog (that bit you)\n    * hot dog\n    * Hot dog!\n    * There's life in the old dog yet.\n    * go to see a man about a dog\n    * You can't teach an old dog new tricks.\n    * a shaggy dog story\n    * be as sick as a dog\n    * the tail wagging the dog\n    * the top dog\n    * work like a dog/trojan
136854
Using Gay for Homosexual has been traced as early as the 1920s, possibly earlier. Some of the sites below give these summaries:\n\nLighter also indirectly cites an 1868 song by female impersonator Will S. Hays titled, Gay Young Clerk in the Dry Goods Store. The lyrics do not explicitly link the word with homosexuality, but they can be interpreted that way, especially if sung by a man in drag. \n\nThe most likely explanation [for the usage meaning homosexual] is that it derives from gaycat or geycat, a slang term for a tramp or hobo who is new to the road. Gaycats were commonly in the company of older tramps, implying a homosexual relationship. The term, according to Lighter, dates to at least the 1890s. Gaycats were employed as lookouts while other hoboes committed crimes. The OED2 cites the 1935 Underworld & Prison Slang by N. Ersine as defining geycat as a homosexual boy. The origin of gaycat is unknown. Green, however, says a gay cat was a tramp who offered sexual services to women.\n\nRawson ["Wicked Words"] notes a male prostitute using gay in reference to male homosexuals (but also to female prostitutes) in London's notorious Cleveland Street Scandal of 1889.\n\n\nThe term Gay did not cross over into usage by the general heterosexual population until the 1960's/early 70's.
937274
The phrase is supposed to have originated in England in the 17th century when city streets were filthy and heavy rain would occasionally carry along dead animals. \n\nThe idea that seeing dead cats and dogs floating by in storms would cause people to coin this phrase is just about believable. People may not have actually thought the animals had come from the sky, but might have made up the phrase to suit the occasion.
17026
1. It comes from mythology. Witches, who often took the form of their familiars - cats, are supposed to have ridden the wind. Dogs and wolves were attendants to Odin, the god of storms and sailors associated them with rain.\n\nWell, some evidence would be nice. There doesn't appear to be any to support this notion.\n\n2. The phrase is supposed to have originated in England in the 17th century when city streets were filthy and heavy rain would occasionally carry along dead animals.\n\nThe idea that seeing a dead cats and dogs floating by in storms would cause people to coin this phrase is far fetched, but just about believable.\n\n3. Another suggestion is that it comes from a version of the French word, catadoupe, meaning waterfall. \n\nReturning to facts rather than idle speculation we do know that the phrase was in use in a modified form in 1653, when Richard Brome's The City Wit, has the line "It shall raine .. Dogs and Polecats".\n\nPolecats aren't cats as such but the jump between them in linguistic rather than veterinary terms isn't large. \n\nI like the idea of number 2, what do you think?
445153
because in old times, dogs and cats would hang out on the roof of houses, and when it rained, the roof would get really slippery and the cats and dogs would fall off. The people inside saw the cats and dogs falling past the windows and said it was raining cats and dogs =]
778170
I'm not entirely sure, but I think it originated with the Rolling Stones as they described their backstage parties for an interview of somesort. The saying has pretty much been adopted by every rock group and wannabe rocker eversince as a way of answering why they're in the music buisness.
344605
Although the cliche could possibly trace it roots back to the 1700's (It cannot rain when it pours), it is the slogan for Morton Salt Company. The company developed a salt that would be free-running even in damp weather. In 1911, a little girl with an umbrella and her now-famous slogan, 'When It Rains It Pours,' were created to promote this new product in a national consumer advertising campaign. The Morton Umbrella Girl and slogan first appeared on the blue package of table salt in 1914.
280494
time and civilisation  killed them.\n\nOnce a warrior gentle of birth,\nThen a person of civic worth,\nNow a fellow to move our mirth.\nWarrior, person, and fellow — no more:\nWe must knight our dogs to get any lower.\nBrave Knights Kennelers then shall be,\nNoble Knights of the Golden Flea,\nKnights of the Order of St. Steboy,\nKnights of St. Gorge and Sir Knights Jawy.\nGod speed the day when this knighting fad\nShall go to the dogs and the dogs go mad.
292922
not so sure of the origin and history behind the phrase but if you find it ranining cat's and dogs be careful not to step in a poodle... i looked it up for you and yu can find the answer at the link below
343729
I don't know i am Flabbergasted! Joking!\n\nThe British comedian Frankie Howerd used to say in mock astonishment: “I’m flabbergasted—never has my flabber been so gasted!”. That’s about as good an explanation for the origin of this word as you’re likely to get. It turns up first in print in 1772, in an article on new words in the Annual Register. The writer couples two fashionable terms: “Now we are flabbergasted and bored from morning to night”. (Bored—being wearied by something tedious—had appeared only a few years earlier.) Presumably some unsung genius had put together flabber and aghast to make one word.\n\nThe source of the first part is obscure. It might be linked to flabby, suggesting that somebody is so astonished that they shake like a jelly. It can’t be connected with flapper, in the sense of a person who fusses or panics, as some have suggested, as that sense only emerged at the end of the nineteenth century. But flabbergasted could have been an existing dialect word, as one early nineteenth-century writer claimed to have found it in Suffolk dialect and another—in the form flabrigast— in Perthshire. Further than this, nobody can go with any certainty.
511988
Strike me pink ~ A shock or surprise (intially it came from sunburn/heatstroke)\n\nI don't believe it is only a British expression.
109945
Urine comes from the Latin, urinari, which means, to dive...however it's related to a Sanskrit variation, which means, it rains!\n\nPiss, however, comes from the Old French, pissier, and it is supposed to be a word that sounds like the activity itself!\n\nSlang & linguistic drift account for the many variations in language which we experience today...
238296
the REAL reason is that in London in the 1800's stray cats would wander the rooftops of the city, looking for rats, occaisonally a dog would find its way up there. if it started to rain hard sometimes a dog or cat would get caught in a gutter and would float right out onto the street. whenever it would rain hard enough for this to happen, the londoners would say that it was "raining cats and dogs."
112033
Don't know who said it recently but it's a quote from Shakespeare\n\n"Cry HAVOC' and let slip the dogs of war!" - William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act III
1013017
Your question really deals with the development of language.  Etymology is the study of the origins of words.  It's been suggested that, at one point, there was a common spoken language.  If a common language did exist, it's origins lay in East Africa, over 150,000 years ago.  Since recorded history only deals with the last five thousand years, our attempts to find the origins of words is difficult, at best.\n\nIn your particular case, Cats were first domesticated some 8,000 years ago in Egypt, most likely from the African Wild Cat.  Since that's 3000 years before recorded history, we have a significant challenge in learning the origin of the word Cat.  Dogs were probably domesticated long before Cats, as well.\n\nThe below link may be of some help however, in dealing with modern languages.