Idiom
rain cats and dogs
Meaning
To rain very heavily.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“Take an umbrella — it's raining cats and dogs.”
“We wanted to walk to the park, but it was raining cats and dogs all afternoon.”
“The match was abandoned at half-time because it began to rain cats and dogs, leaving the pitch completely waterlogged.”
Examples
simple
“Take an umbrella — it's raining cats and dogs.”
contextual
“We wanted to walk to the park, but it was raining cats and dogs all afternoon.”
complex
“The match was abandoned at half-time because it began to rain cats and dogs, leaving the pitch completely waterlogged.”
Origin
Attested from the 17th century (Richard Brome, 1651, has 'rain dogs and polecats'; Jonathan Swift used the modern form in 1738); despite many theories, the true origin is unknown.
Key words
Related idioms
- Level
- A2 · Elementary
- Updated