Читать книгу Bees Knees and Barmy Armies - Origins of the Words and Phrases we Use Every Day - Harry Oliver - Страница 22

Not everyone is familiar with the 1980s pop band of the same name, but surely most people know that ‘curiosity killed the cat’. In fact, this proverb is related to a sixteenth-century saying, ‘Care killed the cat. A cat has nine lives, but care would wear them all out,’ at which time ‘care’ meant sorrow or worry. This warning that worry could lead you to an early grave was the accepted version of the phrase until as recently as the early twentieth century, when ‘curiosity’ rather than ‘care’ became the downfall of the cat. Whether or not ‘satisfaction brought him back’, as the saying goes, remains to be seen.