Idiom
Raining cats and dogs
By EasySay. Published . Updated .
Raining cats and dogs means raining very hard indeed.
The picture is silly on purpose: pets tumbling from the sky instead of drops. People say “it is raining cats and dogs” when an umbrella barely helps. It is playful and old, and you will hear it in every country, mostly from cheerful speakers.
Written for EasySay, in our own words.
In short
- AvoidSay “cats and dogs”, in that order.
- Or sayBucketing down
Raining cats and dogs: what it is, and what it is not
- IS
- Raining very hard; a downpour.
- IS
- Cambridge labels it old-fashioned.
- IS
- About 0.04 times per million words in British books, 2010 to 2019.
- IS
- About 0.03 times per million words in American books, 2010 to 2019.
- IS NOT
- About animals falling from the sky: it means raining very hard.
Meaning: Raining very hard; a downpour.
How do people say it?
- In conversation:
Take a coat. It has been raining cats and dogs all morning.
- At work:
The site is flooded. It rained cats and dogs all night.
Check yourself
What should I know?
The words say
Cats and dogs falling from the sky instead of rain.
It really means
Rain so heavy that it soaks everything fast.
What do dictionaries say?
- In Australia
- Cambridge labels it old-fashioned. The dictionaries we checked give it no Australian label, so it is general English, not only from Australia.
- In the UK
- Google Books (2010 to 2019): about 0.04 times per million words in British books.
- In the US
- Google Books (2010 to 2019): about 0.03 times per million words in American books.
What mistakes should I avoid?
- Say “cats and dogs”, in that order. “Dogs and cats” is not the phrase.
- Use it only for very heavy rain. A light shower is not cats and dogs.
- No animal is harmed or meant. Do not explain it to children as real pets falling.
The picture is pure nonsense, and the nonsense is the point. Drip by drip, rain is ordinary; cats and dogs from the sky is a carnival. The exaggeration tells the listener exactly how hard it falls without a single measurement.
An umbrella folds, shoes fill, and the street runs like a creek. That is cats and dogs: weather too big for plain words, so the language sends down the pets instead.
Hold it against “under the weather”, its sly neighbour. One is about weather and one is not, and learners mix them for years. The sick phrase wears the sky, while the sky phrase wears the pets.
“When pigs fly” completes the small zoo of impossible skies — animals aloft, each meaning its own thing. Three phrases, three weathers, and each one is a picture, not a forecast. Learn them as one shelf of sky pictures and they stop slipping.
Tone is easy: cheerful, old and a little theatrical. Cambridge labels it old-fashioned, and “heavy rain” is the plain choice.
In a formal forecast it would sound wrong, which is why the plain cousins exist: pouring, pelting, bucketing. Match the word to the room — the pets for friends, the plain rain for work — and the downpour will land right.
What else can I say?
- Bucketing down Australian; rain like tipped buckets.
- Pouring A plain phrase.
- Pelting down British; hard driven rain.
More idioms
- Under the weather Feeling a little unwell or tired, not at your best.
- When pigs fly It will not happen; said with a laugh about the impossible.
More examples
- In a text:
Delayed. Raining cats and dogs here, see you soon.
Questions people ask
Do cats and dogs really fall?
No, they do not. The animals are a silly picture for very heavy rain. No pet is meant or harmed.
What is another way to say it?
“Heavy rain” is the plain phrase, and “pouring” is another. Both say the same thing without the pets.
Is it the same as “under the weather”?
No. Cats and dogs is truly about rain; under the weather means feeling unwell. The pair confuses learners, so learn them together.
Sources and dates
- EasySay's own writing for the idioms, EasySay. Licence: original writing for EasySay. Checked .
- Cambridge Dictionary: usage labels, Cambridge University Press & Assessment. Licence: our own words, from the facts in the source. Checked .
- Google Books Ngram Viewer: counts per million words, 2010 to 2019, Google. Licence: our own words, from the facts in the source. Checked . Counts read from the Google Books Ngram Viewer (British and American English corpora, 2010 to 2019). Google publishes the Ngram data under CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).
Cite this page
EasySay. "Raining cats and dogs". https://easysay.org/idioms/raining-cats-and-dogs. Last updated 23 October 2026.
https://easysay.org/idioms/raining-cats-and-dogs