Great day again yesterday, everyone! So many people are so close to their halfway point!
The origin of the phrase "grinning like a cheshire cat" is unknown - it was not, in fact, coined by Lewis Carroll. It first appeared sometime in the late 18th century; for example, John Wolcot, the poet and satirist, who wrote under the pseudonym of Peter Pindar, included it in his
Works, published variously between 1770 and 1819: "Lo! like a Cheshire cat our court will grin". William Makepeace Thackeray also used the phrase well before it appeared in
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, in
The Newcomes; memoirs of a most respectable family, 1854–55: "That woman grins like a Cheshire cat". One possible explanation for the origin of the phrase appears in
Brewer's Dictionary: "The phrase has never been satisfactorily accounted for, but it has been said that cheese was formerly sold in Cheshire moulded like a cat that looked as though it was grinning". In any case, Carroll had obviously heard the phrase and used it as his inspiration for his character. Alice herself remarks, after the cat has disappeared in his trademark way, that "she has often seen a cat without a grin but never a grin without a cat".
