I think Rich is recalling "let the cat out of the bag", which may have a
nautical origin (referring to bringing the cat o' nine tails out of the
bag in order to flog a hapless sailor -- yow!). (I think I've read this
story several places, but I just confirmed it with a quick NEXIS search
that produced a Boston Globe article of 8/3/91 citing The Facts On File
Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins.)
-- Mary
Mary Whisner, Head of Reference
Gallagher Law Library, University of Washington
whisner@u.washington.edu
On Tue, 10 Jun 1997, Fred Shapiro wrote:
> While browsing through the law-lib archives, I saw that Rich Leiter posted
> a message on June 3 asking about the origin of the expression "more
> than one way to skin a cat." Rich thought the "cat" in the expression was
> actually a nautical or military term having nothing to do with animals.
> In fact, the "cat" in the expression does refer to a cat. If you look in
> any of the major proverb dictionaries you will see that this expression is
> merely a variant of old proverbs about "There are more ways to skin a cat
> (dog) than ...", going back to the 17th century.
>
> Fred Shapiro
> Associate Librarian for Public Services
> Lillian Goldman Library
> Yale Law School
>
>
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