Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
The expression does not refer to pussy cats, but to the cat 'o nine tails - a whip used to punish sailors in the Royal Navy. |
I know what a cat 'o nine tails is. I didn't know the expression referred to that, rather than a real cat. I've always heard it as "swing a dead cat".
Do you happen to have an authoritative source on the etymology? No Wikipedia links, please.
Reading the Wikipedia article about cat 'o nine tails, I see that even there, the attribution of the phrase "swing a cat" is disputed.