Where did the expression, "cat got your tongue?" originate from?
97470
It was popular by the mid 1800's but no one seems to know where it comes from. It was probably just someone being clever, and then it caught on.
836667
Here goes- take your pick:\n\n1.It comes from mythology. Witches, who often took the form of their familiars - cats, are supposed to have ridden the wind. Dogs and wolves were attendants to Odin, the god of storms and sailors associated them with rain. Well, some evidence would be nice. There doesn't appear to be any to support this notion.\n\n\n2.Cats and dogs were supposed to be washed from roofs during heavy weather. This is a widely repeated tale. It got a lease of life with the message "Life in the 1500s", which began circulating on the Internet in 1999. Here's the relevant part of that:\n\nI'll describe their houses a little. You've heard of thatch roofs, well that's all they were. Thick straw, piled high, with no wood underneath. They were the only place for the little animals to get warm. So all the pets; dogs, cats and other small animals, mice, rats, bugs, all lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery so sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Thus the saying, "it's raining cats and dogs."\n\nThis is nonsense of course. It hardly needs debunking, but, lest there be any doubt... \n\nDogs lived in thatched roofs? No, of course they didn't. Even accepting that mad idea, for them to have slipped off when it rained they would have needed to be on the outside - hardly the place an animal would head for to shelter from bad weather.\n\n\n3.The phrase is supposed to have originated in England in the 17th century when city streets were filthy and heavy rain would occasionally carry along dead animals. \n\nThe idea that seeing dead cats and dogs floating by in storms would cause people to coin this phrase is just about believable. People may not have actually thought the animals had come from the sky, but might have made up the phrase to suit the occasion. \n\n\n4.Another suggestion is that it comes from a version of the French word, catadoupe, meaning waterfall. \n\nWell, again. No evidence. If the phrase were 'raining cats' or if there also existed a French word, dogadoupe we might be going somewhere with this one. As there isn't let's pass this by.
1028832
Curiousity overwhelmed the cat's own good sense and judement. The end of the phrase, however, is 'satisfaction brought it back', which really changes the meaning.
598924
My guess is that the saying evolved from the expression "Holy Lord!" or "Holy God!".  Over time, language has become more coarse and somebody felt like tossing in the ol' S-word instead of "God" and it stuck.
393250
phew.... here ya go:\n\n"The Dictionary of Contemporary Slang" by Tony Thorne (1990, originally published by Bloomsbury Publishing). "cakehole, n. British. Mouth. A slang term which was extremely widespread (and considered by many to be vulgar) in the 1950s and 1960s. It survives in the argot of schoolchildren."\n\nIn other words, it came from the British.
1065902
It's an expression used in Mexico. It is used in different ways:\n\n(1) To denote repulsion. Example: "¿Ya la viste? ¡¡Chale!! (Did you see her? Eeeeew!!)\n\n(2) To denote rejection. Example: "¡¡Chale!! Yo no lo hago." (No way! I won't do it). \n\nSATI and CIHUATL are referring to the second way.
482731
The application of the word to human intercourse dates at least as far back as Proto-Germanic times, about 2500 years ago.  The form was *fukan "to have intercourse".  It was not vulgar originally.  Indeed, it started life as a euphemism for another word (perhaps lost in time).  The original meaning in Proto-Indo-European (about 6000 years ago) of *pug- was "to strike" (*pug- is the ancestor word for *fukan).
785422
It's probably from Aesop's Fables. That's where most quotes like that come from.
468482
This phrase stems from a kissing booth at a carnival that was held in Podunk, Iowa.  It turns out that the young lady that was going to occupy the booth was thrown from the animal that she was riding on the way to said boot and injured her mouth so they decided to use the animal that she was riding, her Jackass.  So for a buck you could kiss to her jackass, or as she would say “kiss my jackass”, and over time it was shorten too, well you know.
482411
[Q] “All my life I have heard the phrase a pig in a poke. Do you know where this phrase originated?”\n[A] Though the current version in full is “Don’t buy a pig in a poke”, don’t buy or accept something without first checking or assessing it, it’s first recorded in London around 1530 in a form intended to be good advice to honourable traders: “When ye proffer the pigge open the poke”, but its best known early appearance is in John Heywood’s A dialogue conteinyng the nomber in effect of all the proverbes in the Englishe tongue of 1546 (a title usually and with good reason abbreviated to Proverbs), where it appears in the form “Though he love not to buy the pig in the poke”. About 1555, Heywood included it in his other famous compilation work, Epigrammes, in the almost modern form “I will never bye the pig in the poke”.\nMany Americans know a poke as a small bag or sack, which it was also in Heywood’s day (a usage that has survived in Scotland). A poke, for example, was a suitable container into which to stuff a piglet for sale in the local market.\nThe proverb encapsulates that wise advice to purchasers of goods, caveat emptor, let the buyer beware—always inspect the goods before you pay for them. Make the seller open his poke and show you the pig within.\nIncidentally, the proverb has its direct counterparts in other languages, as in the Swedish Köp inte grisen i säcken! However, in other languages it refers to cats, as in French: Acheter chat en poche (“To buy a cat in a pouch”), and German: Die Katze im Sack kaufen (“To buy a cat in a sack”). Why the expressions in these languages refer to cats and not pigs supports a link with another expression, to let the cat out of the bag.
317290
According to Mencken's 'American Language' and the 'Thesaurus of American Slang' by Berry and Van den Bark, 'lam, lammister' and 'on the lam' -- all referring to hasty departure -- were common in thieves' slang before the start of this century. Mencken quotes a newspaper report on the origin of 'lam' which actually traces it indirectly back to Shakespeare's time -- 'Its origin should be obvious to anyone who runs over several colloquial phrases for leavetaking, such as 'beat it' and 'hit the trail'...The allusion in 'lam' is to 'beat,' and 'beat it' is Old English, meaning 'to leave.' During the period of George Ade's 'Fables in Slang' (1900), cabaret society delight in talking slang, and 'lam' was current. Like many other terms, it went under in the flood of new usages of those days, but was preserved in criminal slang. A quarter of a century later it reappeared.' The Sage of Baltimore goes on to quote a story from the 'New York Herald Tribune' in 1938 which reported that 'one of the oldest police officers in New York said that he had heard 'on the lam' thirty years ago." From the "Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins" by William and Mary Morris (HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 1977, 1988).
290428
The same one I gave your mom after i f*cked her brains out, you stupid, silly assh*le: your mouth is for swallowing, not speaking.\n\nhow was that?  :-)
1048794
[Q] From Mike Willis: “I’m trying to find out the origin of the phrase, on the QT, meaning off the record or in confidence.”\n\n[A] According to Robert Hendrickson, in The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, the first reference is from a British ballad of 1870, which contained the line “Whatever I tell you is on the QT”. It seems to have been just an abbreviated spelling, using the first and last letters of the word quiet, the mild obfuscation also suggesting a meaning for the expression. The Oxford English Dictionary has a first sighting from 1884: “It will be possible to have one spree on the strict q.t.”. Mr Hendrickson points out that it also occurs in a famous London ditty of 1891, sung by Lottie Collins, which also introduced the famous chorus line “Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay”:\n\n    A sweet Tuxedo girl you see,\n    Queen of swell society,\n    Fond of fun as fun can be,\n    When it's on the strict Q.T.
647206
By far the most shocking one that I'd discovered was "feisty," which literally means "like a farting dog."  It comes from an abbreviation of the phrase "fisting hound" or "fisting dog," and "fist" was in this case a reference to breaking wind.  (Though "fist" was used in the phrase as a general pejorative, like if you tripped over the "fucking chair.")
17026
1. It comes from mythology. Witches, who often took the form of their familiars - cats, are supposed to have ridden the wind. Dogs and wolves were attendants to Odin, the god of storms and sailors associated them with rain.\n\nWell, some evidence would be nice. There doesn't appear to be any to support this notion.\n\n2. The phrase is supposed to have originated in England in the 17th century when city streets were filthy and heavy rain would occasionally carry along dead animals.\n\nThe idea that seeing a dead cats and dogs floating by in storms would cause people to coin this phrase is far fetched, but just about believable.\n\n3. Another suggestion is that it comes from a version of the French word, catadoupe, meaning waterfall. \n\nReturning to facts rather than idle speculation we do know that the phrase was in use in a modified form in 1653, when Richard Brome's The City Wit, has the line "It shall raine .. Dogs and Polecats".\n\nPolecats aren't cats as such but the jump between them in linguistic rather than veterinary terms isn't large. \n\nI like the idea of number 2, what do you think?
157240
I used to be a server and we used to say that all the time but I had no idea where it came from.  So...  I tried to find some info and this is a website I found.  I hope it answers your questions.  I found it interesting.  \n\nhttp://www.dinermuseum.org/culture/culture-slang.php
1013017
Your question really deals with the development of language.  Etymology is the study of the origins of words.  It's been suggested that, at one point, there was a common spoken language.  If a common language did exist, it's origins lay in East Africa, over 150,000 years ago.  Since recorded history only deals with the last five thousand years, our attempts to find the origins of words is difficult, at best.\n\nIn your particular case, Cats were first domesticated some 8,000 years ago in Egypt, most likely from the African Wild Cat.  Since that's 3000 years before recorded history, we have a significant challenge in learning the origin of the word Cat.  Dogs were probably domesticated long before Cats, as well.\n\nThe below link may be of some help however, in dealing with modern languages.