Grinning like a Cheshire cat
The best-known use of the phrase is in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, published in 1865. Alice says to the Duchess, “I didn’t know that Cheshire cats always grinned; in fact, I didn’t know that cats COULD grin.”
This may have come from Lewis Carroll’s own childhood memories. He grew up in the Cheshire village of Daresbury and would have been familiar with the practice of producing cheeses in the shape of a grinning cat. A local legend in the Cheshire port of Chester claims that their cats were very contented because they fed on the ship mice enticed onshore by the scent of the local milk and cheese.
Curiosity killed the cat
Everyone knows how inquisitive cats are. It’s one of their most endearing qualities. This phrase dates back to the 16th century and the original saying was “care kills a cat”, a caution not to worry or fret. It’s likely the expression comes from a line in English playwright Ben Jonson’s 1598 play, Every Man in His Humour: “Helter Skelter, hang sorrow, care’ll kill a Cat, up-tails and all.” Over time, the word “care” evolved into “curiosity” and the meaning changed. It’s now used as a caution against being overly inquisitive.
Cat got your tongue?
The phrase probably comes from a custom in the Middle East many centuries ago, when it was common to punish a thief by cutting off the right hand, and a liar by ripping out the tongue. These severed body parts were then fed to the king’s pet cats.
The expression is often asked of a child who is silent or not answering so another explanation of the phrase is that it comes from an old wives’ tale that a cat can suck the breath out of a sleeping baby.
Another more literal explanation is from the French saying, “Je donne ma langue au chat” (“I throw my tongue to the cat”). This is used to express something along the lines of “I have nothing to say”.
You’re the cat’s pyjamas
This term is first thought to have originated with EB Katz, an English tailor of the late 1700s and early 1800s, who made the finest silk pyjamas for royalty and other wealthy patrons. Other similar phrases such as “the cat’s meow” or the “cat’s whiskers” were popularised in the 1920s.
Raining cats and dogs
This probably stems from the streets of 18th-century England, when heavy rain would occasionally carry along dead animals. Jonathan Swift described this event in the poem A Description of a City Shower, first published in the 1710: “Now in contiguous Drops the Flood comes down… Drown’d Puppies, stinking Sprats, all drench’d in Mud, Dead Cats and Turnip-Tops come tumbling down the Flood.”
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