Grinning like a chessy cat12/4/2023 ![]() ![]() A similar case is to be found in the village of Charlton, between Pewsey and Devizes, Wiltshire. The resemblance of these ‘lions’ to ‘cats’ caused them to be generally called by the more ignoble name. I remember to have heard many years ago, that it owes its origin to the unhappy attempts of a sign painter of that county to represent a lion rampant, which was the crest of an influential family, on the sign-boards of many of the inns. The second theory seems to have first appeared in Notes and Queries of 24 th April 1852. This may possibly have originated the saying.īut no evidence that such cheeses were produced has been found. Some years since Cheshire cheeses were sold in this town moulded into the shape of a cat, bristles being inserted to represent the whiskers. The first one was apparently first proposed by a contributor to Notes and Queries of 16 th November 1850, signing himself T. The origin of this expression is unknown. He grins like a Cheshire cat said of any one who shews his teeth and gums in laughing. For example, in the second edition of A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1788), Francis Grose wrote:Ĭheshire Cat. “It’s a Cheshire cat,” said the Duchess, “and that’s why.”īut the phrase was already well established. “Please would you tell me,” said Alice, a little timidly, for she was not quite sure whether it was good manners for her to speak first, “why your cat grins like that?” The Cheshire cat is now largely identified with the character in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), by the English writer Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson – 1832-98): ![]()
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