Ito Kazumasa wrote:

> Hello listers,
> . There are many idiomatic expressions
> in English using "cat(s)". Curiosity killed the cat, Care killed the cat, A
> cat has nine lives, etc.
> Among them are ones which use names of places in England and Ireland. i.e.,
> "grin like a Cheshire cat" and "fight like Kilkenny cats" Because
> dictionaries(both monolingual and bilingual) categorize them
> differently(Chiefly British, Colloquial, Archaic, etc), I did a little
> research on the Internet. What I found may be inaccurate, however. I would
> appreciate it if someone would provide feedback on this question.

Kazumasa-san, I am not sure exactly what your question is.  I found
some interesting stories behind some of these phrases in QPB
Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins (1997) by Robert Hendickson.
This work was originally published under the title _The Facts on File
Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, Revised and Expanded
Edition_.   For both of the phrases that you cite as having a
geographic reference, this encyclopedia says that no convincing proof
has been offered to substantiate stories that supposedly underlie the
origin of these phrases.  However, all the stories relating to "fight
like Kilkenny cats" do have Kilkenny, Ireland as their setting.  For
the phrase "grin like a Cheshire cat" the origin may have to do with
the cheese (that got its name from the place), but again the
encyclopedia states there is "no satisfactory explanation of the
allusion."

Mike Medley



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R. Michael Medley       VPH 211                Ph: (712) 737-7047
Assistant Professor     Northwestern College
Department of English   Orange City, IA  51041
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