This post is all about the origin of the old and rarely used saying, “raining cats and dogs” plus its meaning. So, for people whose first language is not English, this phrase means “it is raining hard” or ” it is raining very heavily”. The literary extracts referred to below describe a situation when, centuries ago in the UK, the streets of towns and cities were narrow, filthy and there was poor drainage. When there were heavy storms, torrential flooding followed which drowned stray cats and dogs living on the streets. Gullible people who came out of their homes after the storm seeing these dead cats and dogs believed that they had fallen from the sky with the rain and that it had been literally raining cats and dogs.
Drown’d puppies, stinking sprats, all drench’d in mud. Dead cats, and turnip-tops come tumbling down the flood. – 1710
This phrase is called an “idiom”. An idiom is a phrase that cannot be understood from the individual meaning of the words used.
Origin
The best source for the answer to this1 says that the idiom “raining cats and dogs” is most likely to have come from a poem by Jonathan Swift, called “A Description Of A City Shower“, which fortunately and thanks to our dear friend Google I can publish here in full as it is in the public domain.
The poem was probably published reasonably widely but this example comes from: The Works of Jonathan Swift: Miscellaneous poems By Jonathan Swift, Sir Walter Scott published in 1814. The poem, however, dates to 1710 and describes London, England, of that era which was a pretty dirty and uncomfortable place by today’s standards by all accounts. It was first printed in the Tatler. Here it is:
The center part has been removed….
The last two lines (that are bracketed) refer to “Drown’d” puppies and “Dead cats” that were washed down with the floods. This is not describing dogs and cats falling from the sky but there is a direct link between heavy rain that caused flooding and these companion animals.
In 1653, a playwright, Richard Brome wrote a comedy called The City Wit or The Woman Wears the Breeches in which he referred to stormy weather “It shall raine… Dogs and Polecats”.
And in 1774 and in earlier and later books, the idiom is clearly stated in its modern form. Here is one example from: The works of Dr Jonathan Swift, Dean of St Patrick’s, Dublin. In thirteen … – Page 161
The phase “it would rain cats and dogs”, is mentioned 8 lines from the bottom of this piece of text. These images link back to the books on Google’s massive and impressive database. There is no doubt that these almost ancient examples of the use of this phrase are the correct origin for it.
Update 8th December 2019! — I have discovered an earlier origin from the interesting literature.com website.
They refer to a quotation from Gabriel Harvey’s 1592 book Pierce’s Supererogation:
‘In steed of thunderboltese, shooteth nothing but dogboltes, or catboltes.’
Although the English language of that time is hard to read you can see the distinct reference to cats and dogs to describe extreme weather.
One last quite important point. People in England very rarely if ever use the phrase today (2010) in my experience. We would use more modern phrases such as “It p*ss*d down”!
Raining Cats And Dogs — Reference:
1. phrases.org.uk
2. As mentioned above.
Below are some articles on sayings.