Get Goose

It’s been raining here off and on for the past few days (Dear Lord, please let it stop in time for our garage sale). I was watching the rain last night thinking about that saying, “It was raining cats and dogs.” And then thought, what the heck does that mean exactly? So, I Googled it. I am a mad Googler, by the way. I Google everything. The first entry started by disclaiming certain derivations and then went on to say this:

The much more probable source of ‘raining cats and dogs’ is the prosaic fact that, in the filthy streets of 17th/18th century England, heavy rain would occasionally carry along dead animals and other debris. The animals didn’t fall from the sky, but the sight of dead cats and dogs floating by in storms could well have caused the coining of this colourful phrase. Jonathan Swift described such an event in his satirical poem ‘A Description of a City Shower‘, first published in the 1710 collection of the Tatler magazine.

How lovely. I am so glad I looked that up. Not sure I’ll ever be able to use the phrase again, actually. Which means I will have to resort to one of my husband’s sayings (the famous Spade-isms). So famous, in fact, that I have decided to post one a week here in a separate category.

When it rains…I mean, when it really pours down rain…he comes out with one of these, “It is a real toad choker out there,” or “That rain is a frog strangler,” or “What a gully washer that is.” No Googling necessary with these sayings. They just tell it like it is. Gotta love my husband.