what is the origin of the idiom " It is raining cats and dogs "?

Answer 1

Here goes- take your pick:

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. Well, some evidence would be nice. There doesn't appear to be any to support this notion.


2.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:

I'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."

This is nonsense of course. It hardly needs debunking, but, lest there be any doubt...

Dogs 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.


3.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.

The 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.


4.Another suggestion is that it comes from a version of the French word, catadoupe, meaning waterfall.

Well, 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.

Answer 2

As with many such questions, the jury is out on this one. World Wide Words offers several possible derivations for the saying, including an old sailor's myth that cats have sway over the weather. Feline meteorological magic, coupled with a symbolic association of storms with dogs, may be the genesis for the phrase. But we can't be sure.
The chatty etymology newsletter Take Our Word For It mentions another intriguing possibility. On account of the notorious inefficiency of 17th-century sewage and drainage systems, the streets of European cities were often littered with debris and dead animals after heavy rainstorms. They had to come from somewhere, right?

Animalplanet.com offers yet two more possibilities for this colorful expression. It could liken the racket made by a storm to the thunderous noise made by fighting cats and dogs. Or, it may arise from the era of thatched roofs when downpours would bring cats and dogs dozing atop houses down onto the occupants.

A general interest weather site run by Wheeling Jesuit University traces the history of raining wildlife. There are several accounts of frogs, fish, and grasshoppers falling from the sky, usually as a result of tornado-like whirlwinds. Cats and dogs, however, have yet to make the list.

The leading theory seems to be that animals have been associated with weather for centuries. Cats stand for rain, and dogs for wind.

Answer 3

An "clarification" broadly circulated by digital mail claimed that in the time of sixteenth-century Europe while peasant properties have been frequently thatched, animals might desire to pass slowly into the thatch and discover seem after from the climate, and might fall out in the time of heavy rain. Drainage structures on homes in seventeenth century Europe have been destructive, and might have disgorged their contents in the time of heavy showers, inclusive of the corpses of any animals that had accrued in them. This occurrence is documented in Jonathan speedy's 1710 poem 'Description of a city bathe', wherein he describes "Drowned doggies, stinking sprats, all soaking wet in dirt,/lifeless cats and turnip-tops come tumbling down the flood."

Answer 4

who knows? maybe the fact that cats and dogs can sense rain and so therefore get away from it as fast as possible, ocasionally seeming like an endless barrage of torrents of rain.

Answer 5

cause people kept stepping the the poodles