Cat Got Your Tongue? Cat Sayings and Their Origins

By Verbalist Richard Lederer | From the 2010 Edition of the Farmers’ Almanac

The poet Carl Sandburg wrote, “The fog comes in on little cat feet.” So does a large litter of our words and expressions. Whatever their ups and downs throughout history, cats have usually landed on their feet and have left their paw prints on our mother tongue. You can read Sandburg’s short poem “Fog” at the Poetry Foundation, and once you notice how many sayings the cat has slipped into, you will hear them everywhere.

Let’s categorize the cats that run and leap and pounce and slink and purr and meow through our English language. I hope you’ll find them to be, in the idiom of the roaring twenties, the cat’s meow, the cat’s pajamas, and the cat’s whiskers, so called because the cat is capable of looking enormously pleased and satisfied. Quick as a cat, let’s make a “feline” for cat words in our English language.

Where Cat Words Come From

The words cat and pussy derive from the Latin and Anglo-Saxon names for the animal, cattus and pus. In some African languages, a man is referred to as a cat, which in American slang gives us the likes of cool cat, hepcat, and fat cat. From there the cat wandered into the card room, the barnyard, the sailing ship, and the nursery, and it picked up a saying in each place. Here is a field guide to the most common ones and the history behind them.

A Field Guide to Cat Sayings

Kitty-Cornered

Cats have kittens, and so does our English language. Kitty-cornered issues from “cater-cornered,” which comes from “quatre cornered,” which in French originally meant “four-cornered.” By a process called folk etymology, speakers thought that in “quatre-cornered” they were hearing an analogy to a certain domestic feline. In the card game of faro, the tiger was the bank or house, possibly because the tiger was once used on signs marking the entrance to Chinese gambling houses. Over the years gamblers transformed the tiger into a kitty, and it became the name for the pot in poker and other card games. Thus, when one contributes to the common store of betting money, one sweetens, or fattens, the kitty.

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Cat and Mouse

On the subject of cat-and-mouse games, we find a curious relationship between social history and phrase origins. Surprisingly, feminists arrested during the suffragette agitation in England in about 1913 inspired the first popular use of the expression to play cat and mouse with. When imprisoned, the suffragettes often went on hunger strikes, and the British Parliament retaliated by passing the “Prisoners’ Temporary Discharge for Ill-Health Act.” The bill provided that hunger strikers be set free while fasting, but, when they recovered, they were liable for re-arrest to complete their sentences. Critics compared the government’s action to a big cat playing with a little mouse and dubbed the legislation “The Cat-and-Mouse Act,” which entered common parlance as to play cat and mouse with. You can read the history of that 1913 law and its nickname for the full account.

Something the Cat Dragged In

Harking back to its larger and fiercer ancestors, many cats have a passion for chipmunks, field mice, birds, and other outdoor animals. They proudly deposit the corpses at their owners’ doorsteps or behind and under furniture, a practice that gave rise, about 1920, to the expression looking like something the cat dragged in. While cats are valued for hunting pests, they do not always discriminate among their prey, and the cat that goes after its owner’s prized pet bird may be in for a good scolding. To look like the cat that ate the canary originally meant to look guilty, but nowadays means to appear smug and self-satisfied.

Fighting Like Cats and Dogs

It is both ironic and telling that an animal without the power of human speech has made such significant contributions to our language. There abound a number of explanations for it’s raining cats and dogs, including the fact that felines and canines were closely associated with the rain and wind in northern mythology. In Odin’s day, dogs were often pictured as the attendants of Odin, the storm god, and cats were believed to cause storms. Another theory posits that during heavy rains in seventeenth-century England, some city streets became raging rivers of filth carrying many drowned cats and dogs. But the truth appears to be more mundane. Cats and dogs make a lot of noise when they fight, hence “fighting like cats and dogs,” so they have become a metaphor for a noisy rain. The Almanac has its own file on this, gathered in our look at whether cats can predict the weather.

Let the Cat Out of the Bag

Why can’t some animals keep secrets? Because pigs squeal, yaks yak, and someone always lets the cat out of the bag. Not long ago, city slickers had to beware of buying a pig in a poke, or bag, from a farmer who was in no way a country bumpkin. The animals inside such pokes were sometimes cats or kittens the canny country folk had substituted for suckling pigs. When the merchant opened the poke, he often let the cat out of the bag, revealing the crafty farmer’s secret. When the cat ran off, the city bumpkin was left holding the bag.

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Related: Can Cats Predict Weather?

Get One’s Back Up

When a cat is attacked by a dog or other animal, it aggressively arches its back, a response that suggested the phrase to get one’s back up to describe humans aroused into anger. On the other paw, cats are often pictured as grinning. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, best known to the world as Lewis Carroll, popularized the Cheshire cat in his children-of-all-ages classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865). The Cheshire Cat in the story gradually faded from Alice’s view, its smile being the last part of the animal to vanish. To grin like a Cheshire cat goes back before Carroll, and the source could be Cheshire cheeses, which were at one time molded in the form of a cat. Another theory contends that the cat grins because the former palatine of Cheshire once had regal privileges in England, paying no taxes to the crown. The Cheshire Cat’s long backstory is worth a read on its own.

Having Kittens

The phrase having kittens suggests a condition of severe anxiety. In bygone, more superstitious days, pregnant women who experienced long, painful labors were thought to be bewitched and about to give birth to a litter of felines. The image stuck, and today a person in a state of panic is still said to be having kittens.

There’s More Than One Way

An old British expression advised that “There’s more than one way of killing a cat than choking it with cream.” This implied that a method of doing something was rather foolish, since cats like cream and wouldn’t be able to choke to death on it. But the saying changed to There’s more than one way to skin a cat and gradually took on its present meaning, that there are more ways than one of accomplishing something.

Both the droopy pussy willow and the tall, reedlike cattail are so called for their resemblance to a cat’s freely swinging tail. Because of that visual similarity, and because it “scratched” the back like a cat, some black humorist coined the name cat-o’-nine-tails for the terrible whip. In addition, the first Egyptian scourges were made of thongs of cat hide.

Nine Lives

Cats have long been regarded as tenacious of life because of their careful, suspicious nature and because they are supple animals that can survive long falls. The Old English saying a cat has nine lives goes back well before the sixteenth century, and the nine “tails” of the whip being similar to the nine lives of a cat might have suggested the full name cat-o’-nine-tails.

When we say or write no room to swing a cat, we are not referring to the animal but to the knotted cat-o’-nine-tails whip used to punish disobedient sailors. The scourge was too long to swing below deck, so punishment was always applied outdoors and left scars like those from a cat’s scratch. You can trace the grisly history of the cat-o’-nine-tails if you have the stomach for it.

Cat Got Your Tongue?

This shortening of the name of the whip to cat also explains the title of this article. The anticipation of a beating by the cruel cat-o’-nine-tails could paralyze a victim into silence. That’s why “Has the cat got your tongue?” came to mean “Are you unable to speak?”

Cats, Weather, and Almanac Folklore

Cats do more than lend us sayings. For generations, country folk read the cat itself as a living barometer. A cat washing behind its ears, sneezing, or clawing at the carpet was said to warn of rain on the way, which is exactly the kind of sign a farmer with no radar would watch for. We keep a running list of these beliefs in our guides to cat weather lore and broader animal weather lore, and it is easy to see how a house full of cats could feed both a folk forecast and a folk saying.

None of this is a substitute for a real forecast, of course. A cat grooming by the fire tells you the cat is comfortable, not that a cold front is 12 hours out. Treat the lore as the charm it is, then check the Farmers’ Almanac long-range forecast for your region before you plan the hay cutting or the family reunion. The old signs and the modern outlook make good companions.

Why Cats Left Their Paw Prints on English

Notice where these sayings were born. The card table gave us the kitty. The barnyard gave us the pig in a poke. The sailing ship gave us no room to swing a cat. The nursery gave us having kittens. The cat earned its place in the language because it lived everywhere people did, prowling the granary for mice, dozing on the hearth, and riding along on ships to guard the ship’s stores from rats.

An animal that close, that watchful, and that hard to read is a natural for metaphor. We borrow the cat’s arched back for our temper, its long falls for our luck, and its silent stare for our own tongue-tied moments. When you weigh a decision, you Best Days it against tradition much the way our forebears did, and you can still line up your own plans with the Best Days Calendar. The cat, meanwhile, keeps its secrets, and we keep borrowing its words.

Cat Sayings: Frequently Asked Questions

Where does “cat got your tongue” come from?

It traces back to the cat-o’-nine-tails, a knotted whip once used to punish sailors. The name of the whip was shortened to “cat,” and the dread of a beating could paralyze a victim into silence. That is why “Has the cat got your tongue?” came to mean “Are you unable to speak?”

What is the real origin of “raining cats and dogs”?

There are several theories, including links to cats and dogs in northern storm mythology and to drowned animals washing through the filthy streets of seventeenth-century England. The plainest explanation is that cats and dogs make a great deal of noise when they fight, so a loud, driving rain came to be described as raining cats and dogs.

Why do we say a cat has nine lives?

Cats have long been seen as tenacious of life thanks to their careful, suspicious nature and their ability to survive long falls. The Old English saying “a cat has nine lives” goes back well before the sixteenth century. The nine tails of the cat-o’-nine-tails whip echoing those nine lives may have reinforced the number.

Where did “let the cat out of the bag” come from?

From the country markets, where a shopper might buy a pig in a poke, or bag. Crafty farmers sometimes slipped a cat or kitten into the poke in place of a suckling pig. When the buyer opened the bag, he let the cat out and revealed the trick, which is how the phrase came to mean giving away a secret.

What does “cat and mouse” have to do with history?

The expression “to play cat and mouse with” gained popular use around 1913, when suffragettes jailed in England went on hunger strikes. Parliament passed a law that freed strikers while they fasted, then re-arrested them once they recovered. Critics called it “The Cat-and-Mouse Act,” and the phrase stuck.

Why is a diagonal called “kitty-cornered”?

It has nothing to do with cats at first. “Kitty-cornered” grew out of “cater-cornered,” which came from the French “quatre,” meaning four. Through folk etymology, ears heard a cat in “quatre-cornered,” and the feline version took over. The same faro-table “kitty,” the pot you sweeten, followed a similar path.