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

Then I'll go;" and Carry picked up a box with a little tea-set in it, and started off, saying: "Do you believe it'll rain cats and dogs and pitchforks, grandma?

From St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 by Dodge, Mary Mapes

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.

It is very pleasant to walk there with a good catalogue, and make it rain cats and dogs outside.

From Peter Ibbetson by Du Maurier, George

"It's bound to rain cats and dogs before you get to the trolley."

From Her Weight in Gold by McCutcheon, George Barr