I believe this is also the origin of the phrase "not enough room to
swing a cat", which refers to the necessity of punishing sailors on
an open deck, and not to being cruel to felines.
> 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
> >
> >
>
>
-----------------------
John P. Joergensen
Reference Librarian
Rutgers University
Law School - Camden
jjoerg@crab.rutgers.edu
Phone: (609) 225-6460
-----------------------
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