2019-07-01 10:48:39
Let the Cat out of the Bag -
to mistakenly reveal a secret
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What's the
origin of the phrase?
- The first recorded use of this phrase comes from a book review in a
1760 edition of London Magazine (which is still published today). The reviewer complains that, “We could have wished that the author had not let the cat out of the bag.” Taking from the context, it seems that the reviewer wished the author had not spoiled a surprise or secret in the book.
There have been
a few origin stories put forth about how this idiom came to be:
The first one, which doesn’t seem likely at all, comes from a proposed market practice. All sorts of livestock were traded in open-air markets during this time, including pigs. Businessmen would sometimes sell piglets in bags. Thus, as this particular origin theory of “let the cat out of the bag” goes, the unscrupulous sellers would sell the “pig” in a bag, but instruct the buyer not to open it until they get home, lest the pig escape.
The buyer would carry a wiggling bag all the way home, only
to have it revealed when opened that they had received a feral cat instead of a piglet. As one could imagine, feral cats were worth (and probably still the case today) far less than a piglet.
The Spanish equivalent of this phrase giving a potential origin is slightly more plausible, but still a stretch. “Dar gato por liebre” more or less means “to give a cat for a hare.” Hares were commonly eaten during the 14th and 15th centuries. At least in terms of size, a cat and a rabbit are more similar to one another than pigs and cats. To pull the switcharoo with a rabbit for a feral cat at least seems plausible. Then again, the whole hissing and clawing thing would still be a dead give away, so color me skeptical.
Another possible explanation for the origin of this phrase, this one at least somewhat plausible, stems
from Britain’s infamous Royal Navy. Sailors would often get in trouble with their superiors. In order to keep these salty seamen in line, the Royal Navy would employ the help of a cat o’ nine tails, a whip with nine knotted cotton cords that could inflict pretty serious damage onto one’s back. The “cat,” or sometimes referred to by it’s other nickname “the captain’s daughter,” was often kept in a red cloth bag, as a symbolic gesture, as well as keeping it from drying out due to the sea air.
When a sailor didn’t perform their duty or when their behavior got out of a line, the captain would order that they be trotted out in front of the entire ship and beaten with the whip. The boatswain’s mate, the one in charge of directing and supervising the crew, would be the one who was to do the flogging. As USS Constitution Museum in Charlestown, Massachusetts delicately states, “he would take the cat out of the bag in front of the assembled crew and there would be no secret about what would happen next.”
As you can tell, there seems to be little consensus on the origin of the idiom. In the end, the most likely explanation could simply be that it derived from a slightly more literal origin with no connection to trickery or metaphors; after all, it really is amazingly difficult to force a cat back into a bag they were trapped in after you let the animal out. #Idiom
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