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

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

How it doth fare with a man on whom evil fortune doth rain cats and dogs Chap. xxi.:

From The Adventurous Simplicissimus being the description of the Life of a Strange vagabond named Melchior Sternfels von Fuchshaim by Grimmelshausen, Hans Jacob Christoph von

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

I know Sir John will go, though he was sure it would rain cats and dogs.

From Familiar Quotations A Collection of Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced to Their Sources in Ancient and Modern Literature by Bartlett, John