Nine-year-old Evie calls from Texas to ask about the origin of the phrase raining cats and dogs. This idiom alludes to the cacophonous nature of a heavy downpour. Around the world, expressions about torrential rain also connote the idea of a noisy...
Paul in South Bend, Indiana, notes that the French equivalent of the phrase have other fish to fry, meaning to have other things to do, is avoir d’autre chats a fouetter, or literally, to have other cats to whip. In Italian, a similarly creepy...
James in San Diego, California, wonders about the origin of the word sploot, which refers to the way cute cuddly animals, such as corgis, lie on their bellies with their back legs splayed out. Other terms for this include frog legs, frog dog, furry...
Pam in Eureka, California, says that when her mother and grandmother would enter a particularly dark room, they’d remark that it was dark as the inside of a goat. Mark Twain used the phrase dark as the inside of a cow in his book Roughing It...
To bark at a knot means to engage in foolish or futile activity, like a dog yapping at a knothole on a tree. This is part of a complete episode.
Cats’ whiskers, or vibrissae, are exceedingly sensitive. If a cat seems reluctant to eat out of a particular bowl, she may be bothered by whisker fatigue. This is part of a complete episode.
