Chrysti The Wordsmith: Raining Cats & Dogs

Greetings and welcome to Christie the wordsmith. A torrential downpour might cause a typical English speaker to reflexively claim it's raining cats and dogs out there but who amongst us has seen felines and canines literally cascading from the heavens. Time has erased the origin of this expression but phrase dictionaries offer several theories anyway. One has it inspired by Norse mythology in which dogs were often depicted as attendants of the storm god Odin while cats were believed to have the power to cause tempests another account fashions an analogy between a violent storm and the sound of fighting cats and dogs. The theory most widely accepted by phrase watchers comes out of 16th or 17th century Europe where feral cats and dogs proliferated in the cities and villages vulnerable to disease and hunger. Many sickened and died on the streets and by ways the animals lay where they fell. Until a downpour turned the streets into rivers of garbage filth and carcasses

it appears as though the creatures fell out of the sky with the rain raining cats and dogs. The Henry Holt encyclopedia of word and phrase origins says early American English speakers coined their own variations of this British expression raining pitchforks darning needles hammer handles and chicken coops. I'm Christie the wordsmith from Montana State University in Bozeman. CHRISTIE The wordsmith is sponsored by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Zoot enterprises a high tech firm in Bozeman Montana offering challenging careers and innovative solutions for the financial services industry. Zoot web dot com.