Grammar Girl here, I'm in Yon Fog Fog, your friendly guide to the English language.

We talk about writing, history, rules, and other cool stuff. Today we're going to talk about idioms the cat dragged in and portmante words like Summerween and brunch.

In episode 976 we talked about Pet Speak, the online language we used to talk about and for our furry friends.

We explored the cativerse and how cats have seemingly taken over the internet.

Well today we're going to delve into how the word cat has slinked its way into many English idioms,

much like our beloved fluffs have sl have blinked their way into our hearts.

But first, let's take a brief look at the origins of the word cat, and how these critters

became such a huge part of our lives.

According to the online etymology dictionary, Cat comes from the Latin catus, which first appeared

in Europe in 75 CE, Common era or AD. Talk about ancient history. It was extended to big

cats, lions and tigers and leopards, oh my, around 1700. A related word, feline from the Latin

fellus was first used as an adjective meaning cat-like in the 1680s. Around

1861 it came to be used as a noun meaning feline animal or domestic

cat in popular language. So how and when did cats become so ingrained in our society and in our language?

Well, it's true, as you may have heard, that Egyptians were responsible for cats

widespread domestication around 2,900 years ago.

In fact, the cat was the official deity of Egypt.

However, according to a Scientific American article by researcher Carlos Driscoll and his colleagues,

research shows that cats may have lived among humans way before that.

In 2004, researchers at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris

discovered a man buried with a cat on the island of Cyprus, suggesting that people had a quote special intentional

relationship with cats nearly 10,000 years ago, unquote. DNA research of the

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