to rain cats and dogs
3
5.9
- idiom
- Informal
:
llover a mares
- It's raining cats and dogs out there!
- raining cats and dogs there
- raining cats and dogs out
- going to rain cats and dogs
Examples
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One fellow says to the other fellow, it's raining cats and dogs.
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It said it was going to rain cats and dogs.
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Oh, but it's raining cats and dogs.
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Just raining cats and dogs out there.
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It's raining cats and dogs.
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"Come in, my child," and with a look at the dark clouds, "it's going to rain cats and dogs."
Fiction book (1997) -
Sometimes it rains cats and dogs.
Blog text (6) -
Yeah, but I hear it's raining cats and dogs in Idaho.
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I hear it's been raining cats and dogs in Idaho.
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It's raining cats and dogs outside, so we should stay indoors.
Synonyms
588
1.0
To make liquid flow in a steady stream from a container
8
5.5
To fall very hard, usually about rain
1
6.5
To rain very hard
1
8.4
To rain very heavily
1
5.6
To pour a lot of water from the sky
To rain very heavily
Rain that falls very hard
To rain very heavily with water falling fast and hard
How Heavy
Surface Forms
Morphology
Although 'rain' refers to precipitation, the inserted animals 'cats and dogs' have no literal or compositional connection to intensity, so the overall meaning is historically idiomatic and not derivable from the parts. Many languages use different metaphors for heavy rain, making this a language-specific idiom that a B1 learner knowing the constituent words would not reliably understand.
Etymology
Rain cats and dogs may come from a strong image: after a very heavy storm, water could wash dead animals out of street drains and off old straw roofs, so it looked like cats and dogs had fallen from the sky. That's why it now means 'to rain very heavily'.