where did the term " raining cats and dogs " come from?
472840
This is an interesting phrase in that, although there's no definitive origin, there are several speculative derivations.\n\nThe first thing to say is that the phrase seems to be unrelated to the well-known antipathy between dogs and cats, which is made word in the phrase "fight like cat and dog". In fact "raining cats and dogs" doesn't make a great deal of literal sense and the explanations below that attempt to link the phrase to felines, canines and weather seem rather feeble. \n\nHere goes though - take your choice.\n\nIt 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\nCats 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, least 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 intuitive place for an animal to shelter from bad weather.\n\n\nThe 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\n\nAnother 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 lets pass this by. \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:\n\n"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\nIn a form more like the current version it appears in Jonathan Swift’s 'A Complete Collection of Polite and Ingenious Conversation' in 1738: \n\n"I know Sir John will go, though he was sure it would rain cats and dogs".\n\nMore likely than any of the versions given above is that this is just a nice descriptive turn of phrase, which doesn't relate to any particular event or practise. \n\nThere's a similar phrase originating from the north of England - "it's raining stair-rods". No one has gone to the effort of speculating that this is from mythic reports of stairs being carried into the air in storms and falling on gullible peasants. Its just a rather good vivid phrase giving a graphic impression of heavy rain.\n\nAnother similar phrase is "it’s raining like pitchforks", the first known reference of which is D. Humphreys' Yankey in England, 1815:\n\n"I'll be even with you, if it rains pitchforks - tines downwards."
527912
The phrase "the bee's knees", meaning "the height of excellence", became popular in the U.S. in the 1920s, along with "the cat's whiskers" (possibly from the use of these in radio crystal sets), "the cat's pajamas" (pajamas were still new enough to be daring), and similar phrases which made less sense and didn't endure: "the eel's ankle", "the elephant's instep", "the snake's hip". Stories in circulation about the phrase's origin include: "b's and e's", short for "be-alls and end-alls"; and a corruption of "business": "it's the beezness".
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.
111517
Seems to be unknown. Can't find any single person credited, so maybe the term just came into popular use around the same time (journalists?). \n\nMaybe look for the earliest use of that term, going back to summer 1929 (predating the Wall Street crash by a few months).\n\n(Does anyone have access to WSJ.com archives, do they go back that far?)
1058993
Actually, the reference originally came from a song that was popular in 1956.  It was by the Jayhawks and called Stranded In The Jungle.  It managed to climb the Billboard charts to #18.\n\nThe story is about a guy who gets stranded in a jungle and all he wants to do is get back to his girl in the states.  He gets knocked out, wakes up in a big pot and smells something cooking then realizes he's about to be the main course for a tribe of cannibals.  The next line is "Great googly moogly let me out of here! " \n\nOf course the expression has been used in numerous other songs since but now you know the complete story goes back half a century.
78286
"It's raining cats and dogs" \nHowever, this one does have a meaning:\n\nBack in the olden days, the roofs were covered in hay, and the cats, dogs, and other animals would sleep in the hay to keep warm. Now, when it rained, they hay would become slippery, causing the animals (mostly cats and dogs) to fall of the roof. Hence the saying, "It's raining cats and dogs"
482411
[Q] “All my life I have heard the phrase a pig in a poke. Do you know where this phrase originated?”\n[A] Though the current version in full is “Don’t buy a pig in a poke”, don’t buy or accept something without first checking or assessing it, it’s first recorded in London around 1530 in a form intended to be good advice to honourable traders: “When ye proffer the pigge open the poke”, but its best known early appearance is in John Heywood’s A dialogue conteinyng the nomber in effect of all the proverbes in the Englishe tongue of 1546 (a title usually and with good reason abbreviated to Proverbs), where it appears in the form “Though he love not to buy the pig in the poke”. About 1555, Heywood included it in his other famous compilation work, Epigrammes, in the almost modern form “I will never bye the pig in the poke”.\nMany Americans know a poke as a small bag or sack, which it was also in Heywood’s day (a usage that has survived in Scotland). A poke, for example, was a suitable container into which to stuff a piglet for sale in the local market.\nThe proverb encapsulates that wise advice to purchasers of goods, caveat emptor, let the buyer beware—always inspect the goods before you pay for them. Make the seller open his poke and show you the pig within.\nIncidentally, the proverb has its direct counterparts in other languages, as in the Swedish Köp inte grisen i säcken! However, in other languages it refers to cats, as in French: Acheter chat en poche (“To buy a cat in a pouch”), and German: Die Katze im Sack kaufen (“To buy a cat in a sack”). Why the expressions in these languages refer to cats and not pigs supports a link with another expression, to let the cat out of the bag.
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 =]
924792
Everyone knows that the “dog days of summer” occur during the hottest and muggiest part of the season. Webster defines “dog days” as...\n\n    1 : the period between early July and early September when the hot sultry weather of summer usually occurs in the northern hemisphere\n    2 : a period of stagnation or inactivity\n\n    But where does the term come from? Why do we call the hot, sultry days of summer “dog days?”\n\n    In ancient times, when the night sky was unobscured by artificial lights and smog, different groups of peoples in different parts of the world drew images in the sky by “connecting the dots” of stars. The images drawn were dependent upon the culture: The Chinese saw different images than the Native Americans, who saw different pictures than the Europeans. These star pictures are now called constellations, and the constellations that are now mapped out in the sky come from our European ancestors.\n\n    They saw images of bears, (Ursa Major and Ursa Minor), twins, (Gemini), a bull, (Taurus), and others, including dogs, (Canis Major and Canis Minor).\n\n    The brightest of the stars in Canis Major (the big dog) is Sirius, which also happens to be the brightest star in the night sky. In fact, it is so bright that the ancient Romans thought that the earth received heat from it. Look for it in the southern sky (viewed from northern latitudes) during January.\n\n    In the summer, however, Sirius, the “dog star,” rises and sets with the sun. During late July Sirius is in conjunction with the sun, and the ancients believed that its heat added to the heat of the sun, creating a stretch of hot and sultry weather. They named this period of time, from 20 days before the conjunction to 20 days after, “dog days” after the dog star.\n\n    The conjunction of Sirius with the sun varies somewhat with latitude. And the “precession of the equinoxes” (a gradual drifting of the constellations over time) means that the constellations today are not in exactly the same place in the sky as they were in ancient Rome. Today, dog days occur during the period between July 3 and August 11. Although it is certainly the warmest period of the summer, the heat is not due to the added radiation from a far-away star, regardless of its brightness. No, the heat of summer is a direct result of the earth's tilt.
950035
Funny - I was able to find web sites that discussed each of those. Here's one for cat's meow\n\nhttp://www.xmission.com/~emailbox/phrases.htm:
1186182
The full phrase is "Hair of the dog that bit you". It is most often referred to when talking about the use of alcohol as a hangover-cure.
416303
Back in the day of this sayings origin in old England, the common folk lived in homes with grass roofs.  The animals, cats and dogs would bed on and during colder weather in the grass roofs.  During a hard rain the animals would be washed off/out of the roof.  Hence the saying it's raining cats and dogs.
695661
From  The alt.usage.english  :\n\n"Given to a cat. How a cat got to have nine lives lies somewhere in the murk of the dark ages. Shakespeare's character Tybalt (Romeo and Juliet) was a reference to a cat and hence Mercutio's ill fated, "…nothing but one of your nine lives…"."\n\nAlso, for Etymology OnLine:\n\n"Cats were domestic in Egypt from c.2000 B.C.E., but not a familiar household animal to classical Greeks and Romans. The nine lives have been proverbial since at least c.1562."\n\nAnd, again, from Answer Bag:\n\n"Ancient mathematical philosophers called "nine" the "finishing post" and "that which brings completion." This is when the luck of the cat runs out, when he/she has used up their nine lives.  All of this comes from ancient belief systems and superstition. The word nine is still very popular today."\n\nHope that does it for you!
111633
I do not get ppl who do this. So many dog owners I see do this, and I think, man...an hour ago he was licking cat pee off a tire and then licking his crotch, and then eating wet dog food...SICK!
704299
or are you talking about rita and runt. a singing cat and a stupid dog who thinks rita is a dog but she is a cat and they travel around trying to find a home to call their own. its that cartoon from animanics.
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.
1125965
it must be raining cats n dogs coz im sure i just stepped in a pooodLe !!!!\n\n\n\nXX