Idioms are fascinating things. They are particularly challenging for people who are learning any new language and it seems like English has more than its fair share of them. One idiom that I use often is 'giving someone the hairy eyeball'. Did I ever hear that somewhere or make it up myself? I don't know but I did have someone ask me to explain it. Think of the face you make when you get a hair in your eye and combine that with some shocking or unpleasant news and there you have a hairy eyeball.
I spent a few hours Thursday night trying to track down why we say 'cat got your tongue?' when someone is too silent. There is nothing in Brewer's Guide to Phrase and Fable on it. Unfortunately, as with many vernacular idioms, it was not written down until late, not until the mid 19th century, although there were several suggestions as to why a cat would want your tongue. The Oxford English Dictionary guesses that it may have something to do with cats being considered witches' familiars and having the sense that the cat has bewitched you into silence but I do not like this explanation.
There is also a story on the net, told and retold, that in the Middle East, a liar's tongue was cut off and fed to the Caliph's cats. I was unable to find a the source for this assertion, whether it was reported by some medieval western chronicler or an Arab writer, so I am sceptical although it is a marvelous story.
There is a nearly identical French version of this idiom "donner sa langue au chat" meaning one is giving one's tongue to the cat but it is used in a different sense. According to the Larousse dictionary, it means to give up (guessing). I found a French blogger who also wrote about other expressions that involve cats. One is "J'ai mangé la langue du chat"(I ate the cat's tongue) which means "I cannot keep a secret" and "mettre quelque chose dans l'oreille du chat"(put something in the ear of the cat) which means "to forget something". I thought perhaps this means there was an early French origin for this expression but it does not appear in Thomas Heywood's books of English proverbs and sayings from the 16th century.
If the expression is derived from the relationship of cats and Satan, then this is a late pairing, from the witch hunts of the late 15th and 16th centuries. Cats were not always seen as agents of evil, especially as many people, monks included kept cats as mousers. The cat was a symbol of liberty in Roman times since it appears on the statues of Libertas, the goddess of Freedom.
The connection between cat and witch may have come from the custom of throwing a cat on the hilltop fires of the summer solstice, which came to be called the feast of St. John the Baptist when the church, unable to change pagan customs, incorporated them into Christian customs. One has to wonder what the cat has to do with the solstice. Cats draw Freyja's chariot, which reinforces the cat and witch connection since Freyja practices seidr, a type of magic performed by women. Though it seems to me that most of the important feasts or sacrifices to the Aesir take place in the winter not in the summer. Isis and Batt are also connected to witchcraft and cats.
Clearly there is something older going on with cats and language and the solstice. The domestic cat is not native to Northern Europe, it appears to have been introduced by the Romans who got them from the Egyptians. I don't like the theory that it comes from cats and witches but I have no alternative theory to propose.
I spent a few hours Thursday night trying to track down why we say 'cat got your tongue?' when someone is too silent. There is nothing in Brewer's Guide to Phrase and Fable on it. Unfortunately, as with many vernacular idioms, it was not written down until late, not until the mid 19th century, although there were several suggestions as to why a cat would want your tongue. The Oxford English Dictionary guesses that it may have something to do with cats being considered witches' familiars and having the sense that the cat has bewitched you into silence but I do not like this explanation.
There is also a story on the net, told and retold, that in the Middle East, a liar's tongue was cut off and fed to the Caliph's cats. I was unable to find a the source for this assertion, whether it was reported by some medieval western chronicler or an Arab writer, so I am sceptical although it is a marvelous story.
There is a nearly identical French version of this idiom "donner sa langue au chat" meaning one is giving one's tongue to the cat but it is used in a different sense. According to the Larousse dictionary, it means to give up (guessing). I found a French blogger who also wrote about other expressions that involve cats. One is "J'ai mangé la langue du chat"(I ate the cat's tongue) which means "I cannot keep a secret" and "mettre quelque chose dans l'oreille du chat"(put something in the ear of the cat) which means "to forget something". I thought perhaps this means there was an early French origin for this expression but it does not appear in Thomas Heywood's books of English proverbs and sayings from the 16th century.
If the expression is derived from the relationship of cats and Satan, then this is a late pairing, from the witch hunts of the late 15th and 16th centuries. Cats were not always seen as agents of evil, especially as many people, monks included kept cats as mousers. The cat was a symbol of liberty in Roman times since it appears on the statues of Libertas, the goddess of Freedom.
The connection between cat and witch may have come from the custom of throwing a cat on the hilltop fires of the summer solstice, which came to be called the feast of St. John the Baptist when the church, unable to change pagan customs, incorporated them into Christian customs. One has to wonder what the cat has to do with the solstice. Cats draw Freyja's chariot, which reinforces the cat and witch connection since Freyja practices seidr, a type of magic performed by women. Though it seems to me that most of the important feasts or sacrifices to the Aesir take place in the winter not in the summer. Isis and Batt are also connected to witchcraft and cats.
Clearly there is something older going on with cats and language and the solstice. The domestic cat is not native to Northern Europe, it appears to have been introduced by the Romans who got them from the Egyptians. I don't like the theory that it comes from cats and witches but I have no alternative theory to propose.
