rain cats and dogs

Idioms  

1. Also, rain buckets. Rain very heavily, as in It was raining cats and dogs so I couldn't walk to the store, or It's been raining buckets all day. The precise allusion in the first term, which dates from the mid-1600s, has been lost, but it probably refers to gutters overflowing with debris that included sewage, garbage, and dead animals. Richard Brome used a version of this idiom in his play The City Wit (c. 1652), where a character pretending a knowledge of Latin translates wholly by ear, “Regna bitque /and it shall rain, Dogmata Polla Sophon /dogs and polecats and so forth.” The variant presumably alludes to rain heavy enough to fill pails.

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Example Sentences

It didn’t rain cats and dogs; it rained cows and horses … lions and tigers … boy, it rained elephants and giraffes!

From "The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs" by Betty G. Birney

It might rain "cats and dogs," rheumatism and pneumonia might hang out danger signals, but they cared not a whit.

From Bert Wilson on the Gridiron by Duffield, J. W.

"But it'll perhaps rain cats and dogs to-morrow, as it did yesterday, and then you can't go," said Godfrey, hardly knowing whether he wished for that obstacle or not.

From Silas Marner by Eliot, George

Thank goodness! our 76 troubles for the day are ended; unless it comes on to rain cats and dogs before we get under shelter.”

From Jack Winters' Campmates by Overton, Mark

Let it rain cats and dogs, if it wants to.

From Si Klegg, Book 2 (of 6) Thru The Stone River Campaign And In Winter Quarters At Murfreesboro by McElroy, John