Raining cats and dogs

United States
April 26, 2007 2:15am CST
Meaning: A very hard rain. Origin: When the bubonic plague was rampant in London, humans where apparently not the only victims of the plague. Cats and dogs were also afflicted, many died in the streets. After a particularly hard rain, street gutters could be awash in the bodies of cats and dogs. Another theory suggests that thunder and lightning represent a cat and dog fight. Yet another traces the origin of the phrase to ideas in ancient mythology that cats could influence the weather, and that dogs were a symbol of the wind.
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