<snip>
On cats and dogs as meteorological events, one can happily say that nobody
knows the true origin of the phrase. [DB]
<snip>
A cognitive explanation may be the most probable and the simplest: cats and
dogs as exemplars of the unlikely ('cata doxas', against experience, as yet
another folk etymology has it). Hence also the remarkable 'ou vrouens met
knopkieries reen' (it's raining old ladies with knobkerries) in Afrikaans.
CW
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'War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.' (Ambrose Bierce)
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