Erik (the cat) and Lila (the dog) poised for conflict (or in their case, snuggles).
30 December 2022
The phrase to rain cats and dogs means to rain heavily, to storm. The underlying metaphor is quite straightforward, likening a storm to cats and dogs fighting. But despite being rather obvious, numerous spurious explanations for the phrase have arisen.
The idea of cats and dogs being sworn enemies and always at odds with one another dates to at least the sixteenth century. It appears in a 1557 translation of a dialogue by Erasmus:
Eulalya. I wyll tell you a prety story more, and so make an ende One of oure neyghboures, a well disposed and a goddes man, but that he is some what testie, on a day pomeld his wife well and thriftely aboute the pate and so good a woman as euer was borne, she picked her into a inner parler, and there weepynge and sobbynge, eased her heuye harte, anone after, by chaunce her husbande came into the same place, and founde hys wyfe wepyng. What sitest thou heare sayth he seighing & sobbig like a child The[n] she like a wise woman sayde. Is it not more honesty for me to lamente my dolours here in a secret place, the[n] to make wondering and on oute crye in the strete, as other wome[n] do. At so wysely and womanly a saing his hart melted, promysynge her faythfullye and truelie that he woulde neuer laye stroke on her afterwarde, nor neuer did.
Xantippa. No more wil mine god thanke my selfe.
Eulalya. But then ye are alwaies one at a nother, agreinge lyke dogges and cattes.
Erasmus’s original Latin, however, does not contain the simile of dogs and cats. It reads:
Sed interim est inter uos bellum perpetuum.
(But, nevertheless, there is continuous conflict between you two.)
The metaphor of a storm being a fight between cats and dogs appears a century later. In the earliest appearance that we know of, it is polecats instead of domestic cats, but this is a result of wordplay, so the phrase rain dogs and polecats is an allusion to the already existing, but as yet unrecorded, rain dogs and cats. It appears in Richard Brome’s play The City Witt, published in 1653 but written no later than 1652, the year of Brome’s death:
Sar[pego]. I will now breath a most strong and Poeticall execration
Against the Universe. (Bri[dget].) Sir I beseech you—Sar. From henceforth Erit Fluvius Deucalionis
The world shall flow with dunces; Regnabitque, and it shall raine
Dogmata Polla Sophon, Dogs and Polecats, and so forth.
Brome is mixing up Latin, Greek, and English here for satirical effect. The Latin erit fluvius Deucalionis means “it shall be the river of Deucalion”; Deucalion being a Noah-like character in a classical flood myth. Regnabitque literally means “and it shall rain.” But then Brome has Sarpego mistake Greek for Latin. In Greek dogmata polla sophon means “many are the doctrines of the wise,” but in Latin these words would mean something along the lines of “the doctrines of inconsequential wise men”; in other words, regnabitque dogmata polla sophon could mean something like and the world shall flow with dunces. And after this bit of bad Latin, Sarpego goes on to mistranslate dogmata as “dogs” and polla as “polecats,” a move Brome executes to make wordplay alluding to the English phrase rain cats and dogs.
We see the actual phrasing rain dogs and cats a few years later in Thomas Flatman’s 1661 Don Juan Lambeto:
I am right glad to see you Sr. Lambert, though not so glad to see you here, however it is better to be here than in the open Fields, where there is no shelter against the Rain, nor any other kind of storm that should happen, for here we have Houses over our heads, so that if it should rain Dogs and Cats we could have no harm.
And in the early eighteenth century we see the animals’ order flipped to the familiar rain cats and dogs. From Jonathan Swift’s 1738 Compleat Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation:
Nev[erout]. Come, Sir John, I foresee it will rain terribly.
Lord Sm[art]. Come, Sir John, do nothing rashly, let us drink first.
Lord Sp[arkish]. Nay, I know Sir John will go, though he was sure it would rain Cats and Dogs. But pray stay, Sir John, you’ll be Time enough to go to Bed by Candle-light.
Despite having a simple and obvious explanation, the phrase has inspired a number of fanciful origin stories that at best have little evidence to support them and at worst are obvious hoaxes.
Perhaps the most famous is the internet myth that states the phrase is from the fact that dogs and cats (and other animals) would live in thatched roofs of medieval homes. Heavy rain would drive the cats and dogs out of their rooftop beds, hence the phrase. This is just patently untrue and displays total ignorance of the qualities of thatched roofs, not to mention the ability of dogs to climb.
Another explanation, one with a bit more behind it, claims that the phrase is a reference to heavy rains in London drowning stray cats and dogs, leaving the streets looking like the animal carcasses had fallen from the skies. Again, we turn to Swift, who uses this imagery in his 1710 Description of a City Shower:
Now from all Parts the swelling Kennels flow,
And bear their Trophies with them as they go:
Filths of all Hues and Odours, see to tell
What Street they sail’d from, by their Sight and Smell.
They, as each Torrent drives, with rapid Force
From Smithfield, or St. Pulchre’s, shape their Course,
And in huge Confluent join at Snowhill Ridge,
Fall from the Conduit prone to Holbourn-Bridge.
Sweepings from Butchers Stalls, Dung, Guts, and Blood,
Drown’d Puppies, stinking Sprats, all drench’d in Mud,
Dead Cats, and TurnipTops, come tumbling down the Flood.
But not only is the phrase rain cats and dogs in use before Swift penned this, the rain does not consist of dogs and cats, rather it is what kills them. Furthermore, the poem is a spoof on Virgil’s Georgics, so shouldn’t be taken literally.
Other proffered explanations include the idea that the phrase is from the archaic French catdoupe, meaning waterfall or cataract, or that it uses imagery from Norse mythology, where cats had an influence on the weather, and Odin, the sky god, was attended by wolves. All of these are unlikely given the early metaphorical uses of cats and dogs to signify something noisy and violent. The actual explanation is the simplest. The noise and violence of a storm is the metaphorical equivalent of a cat and dog fight.
Sources:
Brome, Richard. “The City Witt” (1652?). Five New Plays. London: Humphrey Moseley, et al., 1653, 4.1., sig. D7v. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Erasmus, Desiderius. Colloquiorum familiarium opus. Basel: Michael Ising, 1543, 250. Google Books.
———. A Mery Dialogue, Declaringe the Propertyes of Shrowde Shrewes, and Honest Wyues. London: J. Cawood for Antony Kytson, 1557, sig. B5r–B5v. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Flatman, Thomas. Don Juan Lamberto, second edition, corrected. London: J. Brudenell for Henry Marsh, 1661, sig. Lr. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. cat and dog, n.
Swift, Jonathan. A Compleat Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation. Dublin: George Faulkner, 1738, 79. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).
———. “A Description of a City Shower.” Miscellanies. London: Benjamin Motte, 1728, 17–18. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).
Tréguer, Pascal. “The Authentic Origin of ‘To Rain Cats and Dogs.’” Wordhistories.net, 23 June 2016.
———. Comment (4 November 2013). Liberman, Anatoly. “Etymological gleanings for October 2013.” OUPblog, 30 October 2013.
Photo credit: David Wilton, 2022.