Raining cats and dogs...

Who will explain me what it means and why?

Thanks, Lydia

Hi Lydia,

You are a funny lady and I admire your wit and humor. Seriously now the term means "raining heavily" but I found a few interesting sites none of which can give the exact source for the idiom but makes for fun reading. There are many more.

Shalom,

Peter

Meaning

Raining very heavily.

Origin

This is an interesting phrase in that, although there's no definitive origin, there is a likely derivation. Before we get to that, let's get some of the fanciful proposed derivations out of the way.

The phrase isn't related to the well-known antipathy between dogs and cats, which is exemplified in the phrase 'fight like cat and dog'. Nor is the phrase in any sense literal, i.e. it doesn't record an incident where cats and dogs fell from the sky. Small creatures, of the size of frogs or fish, do occasionally get carried skywards in freak weather. Impromptu involuntary flight must also happen to dogs or cats from time to time, but there's no record of groups of them being scooped up in that way and causing this phrase to be coined. Not that we need to study English meteorological records for that - it's plainly implausible. READ MORE

[Q] From Gérard Joannès: “I know the phrase it’s raining cats and dogs is a bit outdated, but do you have any idea about its origin?”

[A] How many explanations would you like? I have found at least five.

The most common one says that in olden times, homes had thatched roofs in which domestic animals such as cats and dogs would like to hide. In heavy rain, the animals would either be washed out of the thatch, or rapidly abandon it for better shelter, so it would seem to be raining cats and dogs. Other suggestions include derivation from a similar sounding but unspecified Greek aphorism which meant “an unlikely occurrence”, or that it is a corrupted version of a rare French word, catadoupe, meaning a waterfall. It has also been suggested that at one time the streets of British towns were so poorly constructed that many cats and dogs would drown whenever there was a storm; people seeing the corpses floating by would think they had fallen from the sky, like the proverbial rains of frogs. READ MORE

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Hi linguist Peter!

As always You help me to understand English idi... idioms!

In Russian language we have not such expression.

Russians say at this case: "В такую погоду хороший хозяин собаку из дома не выгонит" - "During such weather the good owner will not expel a dog from the house "