MC Ward wrote:
> Thanks very much for clearing up "the cat's mother."
> It never occurred to me that it was/is a dehumanizing
> gesture. As for Himself, my Irish great-grandmother
> always called her husband "Mr. McAlister." Obviously,
> one couldn't call him "the cat's father" without being
> insulting, though insulting a woman was okay.
>
"Himself" I learned by reading Eugene O'Neill, my source for all things
Irish:-).
My mother used "the cat's mother" in response to overusing (so she
thought) the pronoun "she." Since she (the cat's mother as well as
mine?) was Russian-Jewish, not Irish, I have no idea where it came from
except from the New York City streets where you were subjected to all
sorts of multicultural things long before there was such a word as
"multicultural." I don't know anything about its literal meaning aside
from being picked up by anyone with an attitude who didn't like what you
were saying.
Cats tend to get a bad rap, second only to wolves. There is the cat's
mother but there also is the far more pointed word "cathouse" for a
brothel. Why a cathouse? How does one line up cats with whores?
(Don't tell me side by side.)
KW
--------------------
Ken Wolman rainermaria.typepad.com
"For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I
was afraid of is come unto me. I was not in safety, neither had I
rest, neither was I quiet; yet trouble came."
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