The Cat’s Pajamas
Origins of everyday idioms (and some you might have never heard before!)
Happy Etymology Day!
I just made that up. But honestly, every day should be etymology day, don’t you think?
As a kid, I always wanted to know why? Where did it come from? Why do we say that?
Karma was paying attention because now my five year old asks me the exact same questions. And while I consider myself to be something of a linguist (three degrees of varying types on the subject plus much of my spare time wasted, er, I mean, devoted to the subject of language), he inevitably asks me about things I’ve never previously thought about.
‘Mum, why do we call them trees?’
Pause.
‘Well, my son, let me tell you something interesting about Proto-Indo-European and how we can tell when modern humans came to northern Europe because of the linguistic evidence that they lived in the vicinity of beech trees… my son? My son? Come back…’
So, I’m going to take you through some of the fun websites that devote themselves to the origins of common phrases in English. We’re going to look at the theories, both likely and unlikely, and see where we end up.
For some reason, ‘the cat’s pajamas’ was in my head recently, so that is where I will start.
