more than one way to skin a cat?
How many ways are there and why on earth would you do that to a cat? Why doesn't the phrase say something about skinning a cow, which seems a lot more the usual animal to skin in our culture?
In a quest to actually post something vaguely interesting to my blog every day I googled it and came up with a yahoo answers link that really confuses more than it answers.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081205194652AADw41x
Here's what I think: The British had a phrase that went like this, "there's more than one way to kill a cat than by choking it with cream." So we brought it with us to the Americas and began screwing it up over time till some kid heard it wrong and started using it like this. Then it stuck.
The moral of this story is that you should only screw up common saying in ways that don't involve the death of beloved pets and family members.
Friday, October 16, 2009
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3 comments:
I thought you might want to know that this post met the criteria for vaguely interesting.
Well done!
Very interesting. I would never skin my own pet. Or yours. So we're coverd that way.
Bwahahahahaha, Marilyn! Very good story! I love the stories behind phrases that we use withoout thinking! Hope all is well! :)
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