Where did the expression “raining cats and dogs” come from?
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 colo
