I think it refers to a time when unscrupulous butchers sold cat as rabbit. When I was a kid, butchers left the fur on one foot of each rabbit to show it wasn't cat.
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Here (Germany), rabbits are still sold with the head left on, supposedly to prove that they are not cats.
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I have the same Qs about the phrase “No room to swing a cat”. At what point in history did people swing cats to check how much space is available and why did we stop doing that?
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IIRC, that one comes from the "cat-o-nine-tails" whip that was used as punishment on ships back in the day. Gotta have space to give a proper whipping. So, when: c. 17/1800's; why stopped: society stopped approving such severe physical punishment.
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Thank you! The explanation turned out to be darker than expected. Not sure now if I should research the origin of the Russian equivalent of this phrase (“no room to drop an apple”).
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In french, you say "not enough to whip a cat" to mean "no big deal". So we also used to whip cats on a regular basis when a matter was deamed troublesome enough.
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Thankfully there's only one way to beat a dead horse.
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During the occupation, my uncle and his friends caught cats and sold the meat to German soldiers insisting it was rabbit meat. I bet he could comment in detail about this.
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I feel like specifying that this was a spectacularly bad idea, and that the only likely reason that they survived unharmed when this was found out was that the residents of occupied Norway was treated very differently from residents of e.g. occupied Poland. To put it mildly.
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It's from more than one way to skin a catFISH
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no no no everyone was skinning cats the same exact way and the person that said that wanted people to do it in other ways
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Wittgenstein might have posed similar questions. "How would you know that there is more than one way? Have you skinned so many cats that you know this to be true?"
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Look; don’t think. If I skin two cats in even very slightly different ways, then I can say truthfully that there is more than one way to skin a cat. I need not add a third way because that could amount to neoliberalism.
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probably when they used them for things like catgut
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Cattgut didn't actually come from cats, or was the intestines of sheep or horses apparently.
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I think I know who came up with that saying.pic.twitter.com/XhWm9nymoI
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Etymology is always murky, but it might refer to catfish. The little bastards are like sharks with thick skins that have to be pulled off. 100-200 years ago there were dudes talking "LIFEHACK: you've been skinning cats wrong all your life. First nail the head to a tree, then..."
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Arguing over The Ultimate Way to skin a catfish like we argue over the best way to tie shoes or eat apples.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv_L9XcdgY0 …
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