Rain cats and dogs

【英文解釋】rain very heavily

【中文解釋】傾盆大雨

【短語來源】Of many explanations the most popular is that cats and dogs used to drown as a result of heavy rainfall on medieval towns that had no street drainage. Some have said that superstitious folk may have assumed that the dead animals had fallen from the sky.

Apart from the fact that medieval superstition is normally not entirely witless, and that cats - if not dogs - are perfectly capable of looking after themselves in a flood, the first recorded appearance of the expression in a play of 1653 is 'It shall rain ... dogs and polecats'. The latter are hardly town animals.

...A better explanation, or at least a clue, is to be found in a quotation from Chaloner's translation of Erasmus' In Praise of Folly (1549): 'Rather should we let all the world go to wreck both with dog and cat (as they say)'. This indicates that there existed a popular expression 'with dog and cat', that it was used of a disaster, and that it meant 'completely and utterly', down to the last dog and cat (as when Noah took refuge from the disaster in the ark?). A downpour reminiscent of the Flood might thus have become known as a rain 'with dog and cat', like the end of the world.

眾多解釋中，最為人所知的是，中世紀城鎮(zhèn)因為沒有排水口，于是暴雨時街道被淹沒，許多貓貓狗狗因此被淹死。迷信的人們就認為，這些貓狗的尸體是從天上掉下來的。

這個說法第一次出現(xiàn)在It shall rain ... dogs and polecats這個劇里，其實不靠譜，貓在洪水里明明是可以存活的嘛。

另外一個說法能說得通，引用自Chaloner's translation of Erasmus' In Praise of Folly (1549)，原文是這么說的：Rather should we let all the world go to wreck both with dog and cat (as they say)。剛好有這么個短語，with dog and cat，用來形容災難，意為completely and utterly。于是傾盆大雨就容易讓人聯(lián)想到a rain 'with dog and cat'，好像世界末日一樣。

【有例有句】We'll have to cancel the cricket match, it's raining cats and dogs. 雨下得太大了, 我們將只得取消板球比賽了。