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Concept
Cheshire Cat
Summary
The Cheshire Cat (ˈtʃɛʃər or ˈtʃɛʃɪər) is a fictional cat popularised by Lewis Carroll in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and known for its distinctive mischievous grin. While now most often used in Alice-related contexts, the association of a "Cheshire cat" with grinning predates the 1865 book. It has transcended the context of literature and become enmeshed in popular culture, appearing in various forms of media, from political cartoons to television, as well as in cross-disciplinary studies, from business to science. One distinguishing feature of the Alice-style Cheshire Cat involves a periodic gradual disappearance of its body, leaving only one last visible trace: its iconic grin. He belongs to the Duchess.
The first known appearance of the expression in literature is in the 18th century, in Francis Grose's A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, Second, Corrected and Enlarged Edition (1788), which contains the following entry: Cheshire cat. He grins like a Cheshire cat; said of any one who shows his teeth and gums in laughing.
The phrase appears again in print in John Wolcot's pseudonymous Peter Pindar's Pair of Lyric Epistles (1792):"Lo, like a Cheshire cat our court will grin."
The phrase also appears in print in William Makepeace Thackeray's novel The Newcomes (1855):"That woman grins like a Cheshire cat."
There are numerous theories about the origin of the phrase "grinning like a Cheshire Cat" in English history. A possible origin of the phrase is one favoured by the people of Cheshire, a county in England which boasts numerous dairy farms; hence the cats grin because of the abundance of milk and cream.
In 1853, Samuel Maunder offered this explanation:This phrase owes its origin to the unhappy attempts of a sign painter of that country to represent a lion rampant, which was the crest of an influential family, on the sign-boards of many of the inns. The resemblance of these lions to cats caused them to be generally called by the more ignoble name. A similar case is to be found in the village of Charlton, between Pewsey and Devizes, Wiltshire.
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