A red-letter day, raining cats and dogs, to be caught red-handed. What is the origin of such familiar expressions?

Colour me ...

There are a number of 'colourful' expressions.

To be caught red-handed
In the act of committing the crime, that is, with the blood still on one's hands.

A red herring
A dried and smoked herring. To train hounds to follow a fox's scent, however faint, or mingled with other scents, the trainer would drag a red herring across the fox's trail to confuse the hounds.

A red-letter day
In almanacks, saints' days and holidays (holy days) were highlighted in red. According to the OED, the expression dates from the eighteenth century.

Red tape
Excessive bureaucracy. So called because of the red tape with which lawyers and government officials bound their papers together. According to Brewer, Dickens was the first to use the phrase: the OED says it dates from the eighteenth century.

Once in a blue moon
Very rarely. A blue moon is the name given to the second full moon occurring in a month: a rare occurrence. It does not turn blue, but there was a blue moon in December 1883. That mild winter followed the eruption of Krakatoa, and the apparent change in the moon's colour was probably due to the dust released into the atmosphere by the eruption.

I don't care what the weatherman says ...

Raining cats and dogs
A very heavy downpour. Cats and dogs, as witches' familiars, could represent witches as rainmakers. In northern mythology, witches that rode on storms were said to take the form of cats.
According to Brewer, 'a rain of cats and dogs' refers to a heavy rain with wind. In Norse mythology, the dog was an attendant of Odin, the storm god.

Real brass monkey weather
A shortened form of 'cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey'. For obvious reasons the shortened form is more usual; in fact the 'balls' were cannonballs and the 'monkey', not an animal, but the brass rack in which they were stored. In very cold weather the rack contracted, ejecting the balls.

More to come!

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