When reading this week's theme under the GBE2 group challenge, the first thing coming into my mind was the old saying 'curiosity killed the cat' and inquisitive as I am :) I thought it would be worth in searching its origin.
The meaning is clear, inquisitiveness can lead one into dangerous situations. I hope my research will not damage me at all :)
Now to the saying's origin :)
The 'killed the cat' proverb originated as 'care killed the cat'. By 'care' the coiner of the expression meant 'worry/sorrow' rather than our more usual contemporary 'look after/provide for' meaning.
That form of the expression is first recorded in the English playwright Ben Jonson's play Every Man in His Humour, 1598:
"Helter skelter, hang sorrow, care'll kill a Cat, up-tails all, and a Louse for the Hangman."
The play was one of the Tudor humours comedies, in which each major character is assigned a particular 'humour' or trait. The play is thought to have been performed in 1598 by The Lord Chamberlain's Men, a troupe of actors including William Shakespeare and William Kempe. Shakespeare was no slouch when it came to appropriating a memorable line and it crops up the following year in Much Ado About Nothing:
"What, courage man! what though care killed a cat, thou hast mettle enough in thee to kill care."
The proverbial expression 'curiosity killed the cat', which is usually used when attempting to stop someone asking unwanted questions, is much more recent. The earlier form was still in use in 1898, when it was defined in Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable:
"Care killed the Cat. It is said that a cat has nine lives, but care would wear them all out."
Curiosity hasn't received a good press over the centuries. Saint Augustine wrote in Confessions, AD 397, that, in the eons before creating heaven and earth, God "fashioned hell for the inquisitive". John Clarke, in Paroemiologia, 1639 suggested that "He that pryeth into every cloud may be struck with a thunderbolt". In Don Juan, Lord Byron called curiosity "that low vice". That bad opinion, and the fact that cats are notoriously inquisitive, lead to the source of their demise being changed from 'care' to 'curiosity'.
The earliest version form of the proverb in print is from The Galveston Daily News, 1898:
It is said that once "curiosity killed a Thomas cat."
And to finish a song!
Inspired from
here
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I associate this picture with the capital of France, with its flavours and lovely impressions. Somehow I smell autumn in my nostrils while walking under the October sun on the street of Montparnasse, can you feel it too?
