I’ve asked some friends about their favourite funny English words.
And the winner is Yota, who told me ‘Not enough room to swing a cat’ What a surreal, almost sick expression to talk about a small room. I love it. It sounds Tex Averyesque to me. Surprising in a country where animal lovers get serious about pet welfare. Well it is also the country that produced 'A fish called Wanda' in which pet murder is extremely enjoyable. And I realised we say ‘Avoir d’autres chats à fouetter’, which is not very nice to cats either. Brits use another animal for this one, and say ‘To have other fish to fry.’
Another surreal saying involving cats is ‘Raining cats and dogs’. I love this one too. Less graphic, but deriving from acute animal psychology: ‘It’s like herding cats’ to mean attempting something impossible like ‘faire boire un cheval qui n’a pas soif’. Cats of course are known to be fundamentally individualist. They would never live in herds or troupeaux.
Any other surreal saying involving torturing pets?
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“There is more than one way to skin a cat”
Modern usage is simply to express that you know of alternative methods of achieving a single objective.
Cruel and inaccurate! as in fact there is only one way to skin a cat if you’re going to do it properly. ;-)
Before I get lynched by all the mad cat lovers out there I should explain that the origins of the saying come from the frequent practice among the British of defrauding each other. “Skinning” something was the vernacular for using it to part the gullible from their cash. A cat could be used as a substitute for a piglet when placed in a bag (see the expression “letting the cat out of the bag”) and cat pelts were also dyed and passed off as more expensive furs.
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