Raining cats and dogs
By paradisesuns
@paradisesuns (1755)
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.
No responses