Thursday Trivia: A cat may look at a king

Okay, so be honest.
When you saw the title, how many of you said, “Well, duh...”?

An early in-print use of the phrase.
Image: Wikimedia Commons

As you well know, cats will look - and go - just about anywhere they please. Which, of course, explains why cats were used to express this proverb's particular meaning.

The Oxford Dictionary defines it this way, “Even a person of low status has rights.”

The McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms expounds a bit more on its meaning:
"No one is so important that an ordinary person cannot look at him or her; everyone has the right to be curious about important people.”

Personally, we prefer the original.  What a succinct and elegant way to sum up this concept!

Like many such phrases, its exact origin is unknown. But we did trace its first known use in print to a compilation of proverbs by John Heywood, back in 1562.

And, correct us if we're wrong, but it sounds as if Mr. Heywood's interpretation back in the day might have been a bit different. And not exactly socially acceptable today:

“Some hear and see him whom he heareth nor seeth not
But fields have eyes and woods have ears, ye wot
And also on my maids he is ever tooting.

Can ye judge a man, (quoth I), by his looking?
What, a cat may look on a king, ye know!

My cat's leering look, (quoth she), at first show,
Showeth me that my cat goeth a caterwauling;

And specially by his manner of drawing
To Madge, my fair maid.”

~ John Heywood, The Proverbs and Epigrams of John Heywood, 1562. 

We think we prefer Oxford's take on it.

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Sources:

Phrases.org

Oxford Dictionaries

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs. The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 2002.

The Proverbs and Epigrams of John Heywood, BiblioBazaar, 2008.

Thursday Trivia: Gone to the Dogs

You could say today’s phrase is one of Biblical proportions!

First, the definition:  To say a person or place has really "gone to the dogs" means they've really let themselves go, or the place just isn't what it used to be.

In truth, the basis for the concept of “gone to the dogs” did originate in the Torah, specifically from the following verse:
"…you shall not eat flesh of an animal that was torn in the field; to the dog shall you throw it." [Exodus, 22:30-31].

"Stray dog on calle Santa Catalina" by mcgmatt

So how did we get from a literal guideline on food safety, written somewhere between the 16th and the 12th centuries BCE, to today's more figurative expression?

It's a safe bet that the term morphed throughout the ages from its literal meaning to today's more figurative one. A search uncovered hints of the phrase being used in various cultures throughout antiquity. But every attempt to track down and verify those claims proved fruitless.

Dog Statue in Kowloon Walled City Park
Kowloon City, Hong Kong
Wikimedia (GNU Free License)

One Stop English relates one such instance where "gone to the dogs" may have been in use back in China two to three thousand years ago, where dogs weren’t permitted inside the city walls.

Instead, they roamed in packs, often subsisting on rubbish thrown over the wall by those who lived inside. According to this source, when criminals were expelled or banished from the city they were said to have “gone to the dogs.”

But to hear the All-Words site tell it, the origin might be traceable back to an ancient Egyptian belief that a pair of dogs guarded the gates to the underworld, instead.

Though it's plausible that either of these tales might truly be where the phrase originated, there is no source material that we can find to corroborate them.

So much of history has been passed down orally, and countless written texts lost to antiquity that it shouldn’t surprise us (yet it does) that the very earliest use of “gone to the dogs” in print dates only back to the mid-16th century of our current era.

The Oxford English Dictionary dates the first known use of the figurative term to be in 1556, in the book, A Short Treatise on Political Power, by Patrick S. Poole:

“Away with these deceivers of my people to the dogs of Hell, you were masters, and not ministers…”



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Sources:

All Words
One Stop English
Phrases.org
Oxford English Dictionary
Poole's A Short Treatise on Political Power
The Japan Times

Thursday Trivia: Copycat!

The word copycat is so ubiquitous, it's easy to miss when considering the origin of pet-related words or phrases.

But it's really fairly young, as words go.

It's a slang term - an Americanism. As such, it was probably in use colloquially for a bit before it first appeared in print.

It means to imitate or mimic someone or something. And it has a slightly negative or disapproving connotation. Being called a copycat isn't really a compliment, after all.

Its first use in print has been traced to a late 19th century American writer by the name of Constance Cary Harrison (we'd never heard of her, either!).

And - you'll love this! - the book was written from the point of view of a fox terrier named Dame Trot. Her canine companion was a fox terrier named Paul Pry. The book details several adventures with her human family (the master, the mistress and "our boys") in day trips set around Bar Harbor, Maine.

Here's a little snippet from the book - and incidentally, the first known use of copycat in print:

An intrepid intern at the web-based magazine, Slate, is to be commended for her sleuthing. She was the one who actually tracked this down, and the folks over at the Stack Exchange  forwarded her research to the Online Etymology Dictionary for updating.

In the course of researching this, we came across a pretty nifty tool we had not known about. This tool is called the Ngram, and it tracks a word's use in print back through the centuries!

We plugged the word copycat (and all variations we could think of) into Ngram and here's what we found:

Sure enough - there's our little blip, right at 1887!

Again, we apologize for our mom, who tends to geek out at the most inappropriate times. Like now, when she should be showing gratuitous photos of Maxwell being a big copycat. When everyone knows it's not possible to copy purrfection. 

Who is copying whom, we ask?


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Sources:
Dictionary definition
Archive.org's online copy of Bar Harbor Days, by Constance Cary Harrison
Slate.com's article 
The Stack Exchange: English Language & Usage
Google Books' Ngram site
Reference.com's etymology
Wikipedia on Copycat 
Wikipedia on Constance Cary harrison

Thursday Trivia: Bell the Cat

Belling the cat is an idiom for asking someone to do a risky, impossibly difficult job:
"who's willing to bell that cat?"

Its origin is a fable known by a couple of different names: The Bell and the Cat, and The Mice in Council.

Gustav Dore's illustration of the fable,
c. 1868.  Public Domain.

Many often mistakenly cite its origin as one of the original fables of Aesop, but its first documented appearance only dates back to the Middle Ages.

Since Aesop lived from 620-564 BCE and there's no record of the tale until the late 12th century, it's highly doubtful this phrase dates back that far.

Odo of Cheriton, a 12th century English preacher, is credited as the first person to capture this fable in print. It's included in his work, Parabolæ, dated around 1200, CE.

There is some speculation that the fable originated from an earlier Middle Ages author or perhaps a contemporary of Odo's, but there is no documentation to substantiate this.

Possibly one of the most interesting uses of "bell the cat" comes by way of a nickname.

In 1482, a group of noblemen were bitterly opposed to King James III's friendship with a low-born mason, a man by the name of Robert Cochrane. It appeared King James' friendship with Cochrane was so strong that they feared James' monarchy was actually a puppet regime, with Cochrane as its master.

As the story goes, the noblemen met to discuss how they could rid themselves of Cochrane. One of the noblemen, a Lord Gray, asked, "Tis well said, but wha daur bell the cat?"

Pieter Bruegel's illustration, c. 1559. Public Domain.

Archibald Douglas, 5th Earl of Angus, led the charge that ultimately ended in Cochrane's death at Lauder Bridge.  From that point on, Douglas inherited the nickname, "Archie Bell-the-cat."

This tale has met with some recent opposition by one historian who claims the story is revisionist history written by those in the following century. Regardless, it makes for fascinating reading!

We know of one kitty Allie would like to see "belled" - she'd like an Early Warning System please!

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Sources:

Odo (of Cheriton),Syracuse University Press, 1985, page 129.
The Proverbs of Scotland, Alexander Hislop, Edinburgh: Alexander Hislop & Co, 1868.
Wikipedia on Odo of Cheriton
Wikipedia on Robert Cochrane
James III: A Political Study, Norman Macdougall, Edinburgh: John Donald, 1982.
Wikipedia on Archibald Douglas

Thursday Trivia: Little Cat Feet

There's not much of a mystery surrounding today's phrase. But I love its descriptive qualities so much that I wanted to share it with you.

And I have run into a few people who didn't know its origin, so I quickly grabbed at this as an excuse to post about it!

"Little cat feet" was made famous in the early 20th century by poet Carl Sandburg, when he used those words to describe the quiet manner in which fog can come drifting in over a harbor.

No one models cat feet better than our feline fashionista, Allie

For those of us trapped in winter's Polar Vortex, I argue that the same can be said of snow! (Minus the plows, snowblowers and shovels, of course.)  There's something very sound deadening and silent about a blanket of snow as it falls and envelops the world in white.

And lest I appear to be waxing poetic about the deep freeze that has held those of us in the U.S. and Canada firmly in its grip, just so we're clear: we are SO over it!

We leave you today with Carl Sandburg's Fog, first published in an anthology of modern poetry in 1919:

"Fog

By Carl Sandburg

The fog comes

on little cat feet.

It sits looking

over harbor and city

on silent hanches

and then moves on."

The oldest cat feet in recorded history? They were found in an archaeological dig in India in 1943, called the Chanhu-Daro Excavations. Click here for a photo of these ancient pawprints!

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Sources:

Bibliographic record: Louis Untermeyer, ed. Modern American Poetry. 1919. Harcourt, Brace and Howe.
Wikipedia
Bartleby
Poetry Foundation