Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[andorles]

Dear teachers:
we can say "rain cats and dogs" when heavy rain.
Why say that?
It is impossible that rain cats and dogs really.

Best wishes,
Eric Wang

[Eric Thompson]

Dear Eric: The expression 'raining cats and dogs' is not literal, only figurative. Impossible, really. Somebody must have just dreamed it up one day, and it made people laugh. So, it kept being said and laughed at, and it still is being said and laughed at. And you and I are continuing it. It won't die soon. -- Eric

[davidbailey]

Probably because cats and dogs fight. So when it rains really hard and it's a bad storm...it reminds you of a bad cat and dog fight.
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[CP]

I recently received an e-mail with a number of false etymologies, supposedly all derived from 16th-Century English life. One of them was that small animals such as mice and rats, as well as family pet dogs and cats, lived in thatch roofs.

�When it rained,� according to the e-mail, �it became slippery so sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Thus the saying, �it's raining cats and dogs.��

The phony etymologies were debunked by the great urban legends Web site, Snopes.com, at http://www.snopes.com/language/phrases/1500.asp. I quote what Snopes has to say about �cats and dogs� here:

Mice, rats, and bugs definitely take up residence in thatch roofs � to them it's a highrise hay mow. Cats and dogs, however, don't go up there.

The saying it's raining cats and dogs was first noted in the 17th century, not the 16th. A number of theories as to its origin exist:
� By evoking the image of cats and dogs fighting in a riotous, all-out manner, it expresses the fury of a sudden downpour.
� Primitive drainage systems in use in the 17th century could be overwhelmed by heavy rainstorms, leading to gutters overflowing with debris that included dead animals.
� In Northen European mythology, it is believed cats influence the weather and dogs represent wind.
� The saying might have derived from the obsolete French word catadoupe, meaning waterfall or cataract.
� It might have come from a similar-sounding Greek phrase meaning "an unlikely occurrence."
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