Here’s a fairly common idiom worth discussing. It refers to hard rain, or heavy rain. The origins are obscure and confusing. Some sources I’ve looked at say it goes back to a superstion of the Middle Ages, others say that it dates from about 1660 and had something to do with overflowing gutters filled with dead animals. I tend to agree with the explanation that loud, heavy rain reminded people of the fighting between cats and dogs and thats how the idiom got started. Maybe you all have some other explanations.
Some other idioms for heavy rainfall in English are:
"It’s raining pitchforks"
"It’s raining buckets (British "The rain is bucketing
down").
"It’s raining orange antenna balls"
Can any of you think of some others?
Most languages have idioms describing heavy rain. Irish says "It’s raining cobbler’s nails"; Spanish says "It’s raining jugs"etc. .
However, I found out that Ilokano (spoken in the Philippines) has no such idioms. They can only say Napigsa Ti Tudo ="It’s raining heavily or very hard".
Some sources I’ve looked at say it goes back to a superstion of the Middle Ages
Maybe you’re referring to what The Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins states:
Raining cats and dogs goes back many hundreds of years to the Dark Ages, when people believed in all sorts of ghosts, goblins and witches and even though that animals, like cats and dogs, had magical powers. The cat was thought by sailors to have a lot to do with storms, and the witches that were believed to ride the in the storms were often pictured as black cats. Dogs and wolves were symbols of winds and the Norse storm god Odin was frequently shown surrounded by dogs and wolves. So when a particularly violent rainstorm came along, people would say it was raining cats and dogs—with the cats symbolizing the rain and the dogs representing the wind and storm.
Whether or not this is true or apocryphal, I like my dad’s North Carolinian expression: "It’s rainin’ like a cow p*ssin’ on a flat rock." :o
I recall reading somewhere that the expression refers to a time when it was the propensity of animals to crawl up into the thatched roofs of poorer homes for warmth. When it rained, the thatch became slippery and the animals tended to fall out of the ceiling. Hence the expression.
I don’t know how accurate it is, but it’s fun imagery.
There are always cruder expressions available: "It’s p***ing down" springs to mind. I think this is much more widely used than the cats and dogs phrase. Then again it could just be a reflection on the kind of company I keep.
Two phrases I’ve heard in parts of northern England are "It’s siling down" (sileing? syling??) and "It’s raining stair-rods".
The first one must be related to Swedish "silregn", which was explained to me as rain that looks as if it’s being poured through a "sil" - a strainer or colander.
The second one refers to rain so heavy that the drops become more or less continuous, and look like the brass rods that were used to keep stair-carpets in place, before some evil barsteward invented those vicious spike-infested strips of wood.
Yes, I heard "stair rods" when I was growing up in Lancashire, but not "siling". Is that from the N.E? In German they say it is raining "Bindfäden", or strings, which has the same idea of continuous threads rather than individual drops of rain.
All of you have been giving some good and interesting responses to this topic.
Re: ‘syling’, there was strong Scandanavian (Viking) settlement in northeastern England in the 10th and 11th centuries (you probably all know that from your history classes) so I can believe that siling has cognates in Swedish and Danish. A similar word, HYLIN means ‘to rain heavily ’ in Irish English. Irish English, I’ve read is based principally upon Northumbrian English which covers most of northern England.
I grew up in Yorkshire, so that’s quite possible - and your dictionary quote would seem to confirm that. Coincidentally, I heard someone use the phrase in a rugby league commentary on the radio last night, and from the rest of his accent I’d have said that he was a red-rose man (from Lancashire, for the uninitiated). So it might be more wide-spread.
I have a vague memory of hearing that it was also used in the Lake District - even further North and West. Of course, there was a strong Viking influence there too, though they tended to be Norwegians who had arrived via the Shetlands and Ireland as opposed to the Danes who came to the East coast. (Swedish vikings tended to go eastwards, towards Russia.)
Another Scandinavian word used in northern England I found in a linguistic atlas is "fleck" for flea. I believe FLICKA is the word for "flea" in Norwegian and Swedish.
The word does not appear anywhere in central or southern England according to the atlas. I’ve never heard Americans or Canadians use it but when I mentioned it to a lady from northern England whom I know Liv (Olivia), she said "Yes we use that word for "flea" and we even have a word "flecky" which we use to say that someone or something is full of fleas"
Take care Edman and have a good day.
(You beat me to it, PW. But having just composed the following, I’ll send it anyway.)
Brian wrote:
I believe FLICKA is the word for "flea" in Norwegian and Swedish
In fact flicka means "girl" in Swedish (the cognate flikke also means "girl" in the Sogn dialect of Norwegian) while flea is "loppe" in Norwegian and "loppa" in Swedish. The latter meanings I know this because I was recently looking into the names given to tiddleywinks in other European languages - and they all turned out to mean "the game of the flea(s)".
Fleck and flecky do indeed mean "flea" and "flea-bitten" in Lancashire dialect (see this site) but I don’t know the derivation of those terms.
Fleck (meaning "spot" or "speck") is indeed Scandinavian (compare Icelandic flekkr and Swedish fläck) and the word exists in West Germanic too: Dutch vlek, German Fleck. In Pennsylvania German uff em Fleck means "on the spot", figuratively ("right there and then") as well as literally. Not having a German dictionary to hand at the moment, I’m guessing, but I suspect that the Standard German equivalent—which would be Auf dem Fleck(e)—may well be a phrase with much the same meaning. (Does anyone know?)
According to this page, there is another dialect word fleck in Essex (SE England) meaning "the fur of a rabbit or of any furry animal".
Well, I’ve wandered away a bit as is my wont, but I hope the above flecky bundle of findings will be of interest to some.
[quote author=Coemgenus link=board=idiom;num=1076528719;start=0#10 date=02/14/04 at 19:54:35] . . . In fact flicka means "girl" in Swedish (the cognate flikke also means "girl" in the Sogn dialect of Norwegian) while flea is "loppe" in Norwegian and "loppa" in Swedish. . . .
I don’t know any Swedish or Norwegian, but I do remember the old TV series My Friend Flicka. I remember one night when I was about five years old I was crying because I thought the show was supposed to be on. "I want to watch My Friend Flicka," I cried as my father flicked through all the channels at least five times. He finally shouted in exasperation, "Well your friend Flicka isn’t on!" I’m a a bit too young to have seen the movie version with Roddy McDowall when it first came out.
Somehow I can’t imagine anyone naming anything as large as a horse "Flea." "Fleabag" maybe, but not "Flea." :D
Thanks for your corrections. That’s what I get for relying on my memory. I’ll have to do some further research on this. I think the linguistic atlas I was looking at (many years ago) mentioned lopp as a word for flea used in Yorkshire and I can’t help but think that ‘fleck’ is still Scandanavian influenced since it’s regional and the Anglo-Saxon word was flea(h) with no k sound.
I can’t help but think that ‘fleck’ is still Scandanavian
Certainly it could be. "Fleck" in Swedish means "spot" or "stain". I suppose by extension, this word could’ve come to mean something small and nasty (like a flea) or perhaps the mark left when you’ve squashed one. I’m quite certain that fleas were a common pest in Northern England during Danelaw, as they were for many centuries after that. However, this is pure speculation, really.
That’s what I get for relying on my memory. ... I think the linguistic atlas I was looking at (many years ago) mentioned lopp as a word for flea used in Yorkshire
On that point at least, your memory serves you well. For example, my dad always said "fit as a lopp" rather than "fit as a flea".
Coem wrote:
Fleck and flecky do indeed mean "flea" and "flea-bitten" in Lancashire dialect but I don’t know the derivation of those terms.
yD has flea as coming from Old English "fleah". Presumably the final h was pronounced, and I can quite imagine that in some dialects it would harden to a k rather than being dropped. Then we probably still have a few centuries left for the vowel to get shortened to make fleck instead of fleak.
BTW, Flicka or Flick can be a diminutive of Felicity, but I don’t suppose anyone would call something as big as a horse Felicity either…
[quote author=edman link=board=idiom;num=1076528719;start=0#14 date=02/17/04 at 11:17:13] . . .
BTW, Flicka or Flick can be a diminutive of Felicity, but I don’t suppose anyone would call something as big as a horse Felicity either…
Ed
Oh, I don’t know about that. I suppose a horse could be a source of felicity to an equestrian or an equestrienne. And a large source of course, of course.
