It\u2019s raining cats and dogs (means, it\u2019s raining a lot)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In the entire recorded weather history, there have been some occasions of animals falling from the sky. Strong winds amidst the storms have caused water-friendly creatures such as fish and frogs to pelt the absolutely shocked humans on the land beneath. But never ever has there been a report of cats and dogs raining down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sadly, it\u2019s uncertain where the thought of pet showers came from. Theories vary from it being a mishearing of an older English word \u201ccatadupe,\u201d which means waterfall, to it being a reference to Norse mythology. We do know that the primitive reference to the idea hails from a 17th-century poetry collection of Henry Vaughan, who wrote that a roof would survive \u201cdogs and cats rained in shower.\u201d Probably the idea, then, was simply that if dogs and cats did rain from the sky, they would do quite a bit of damage to the structures below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The apple of my eye (means, a person or object loved above everyone else)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Amongst, all the fruit in the world, it sounds strange that the apple would be selected above all others to be the insignia of love. Certainly, apples are good, but are they truly the sweetest possible thing that can be compared with your love to? Perhaps, not. The phrase \u201capple of my eye\u201d is quite old, and it did not always mean what it is today. It could be traced back to the 9th<\/sup> century CE when it was written in Old English by King \u00c6lfred the Great, but at that stage, it referred to the pupil of the eye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s not clear how exactly the shift transformed from \u201cpupil\u201d to \u201cloved thing.\u201d Shakespeare wrote in A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream of Cupid\u2019s magic sinking into the apple of one\u2019s eye, which looks to say \u201cpupil,\u201d but Cupid\u2019s powers are love-related, so there might be a double meaning here. There is one part of the phrase one can demystify, though: the use of \u201capple.\u201d For a moment, the word \u201capple\u201d was a generic term for \u201cfruit\u201d (this is how pineapple got its name, in spite of not being an apple at all). Thus, the authentic \u201capple of the eye\u201d was not the red or green fruit one eats today, but any fruit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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