GRINNING LIKE A CHESHIRE CAT

THE IDIOM ‘grinning like a Cheshire cat’ means to smile broadly. Sometime it means that the grin is wide enough that it even exposes the gums.

For Example: I think Mohit has completed his homework, when I asked about it he was grinning like a Cheshire cat.you may think that the expression is based on some real cat, but this is not true. In 1770 and 1819, English poet John Wolcot used the phrase in his work “Lo! Like a Cheshire car our court will grin” In 1854-55, English novelist William Makepeace also mentioned ‘Cheshire cat’ in her work The Newcomes: Memoirs of A Most Respectable Family, in a dialogue, “Mr Newcome says to Mr Pendennis in his droll, humorous way, ‘That woman grins like a Cheshire cat’.” The phrase, however, was made famous by Lewis Carroll, who used Cheshire cat as one of the characters in his novel Alice in Wonderland in 1865. The character is remarkable as it has the unique ability to disappear and appear. It features multiple times in the story but whenever the Cheshire cat fades it leaves a wide grin. ‘Please would you tell me,’ said Alice, ‘why your cat grins like that?’ ‘It’s a Cheshire cat,’ said the Duchess, ‘and that’s why. ‘ ‘I didn’t know that Cheshire cats always grinned; in fact, I didn’t know that cats COULD grin.’ ‘They all can,’ said the Duchess; ‘and most of ‘em do.’ Although, there is no explanation of why cats were believed to be smiled that way, but some folk derivations might have inspired Carroll to come up with this smiling character. Among the folk theories a possible one is one favoured by the people of Cheshire, a county in England which boasts of dairy farms; hence the cats grin because of the abundance of milk and cream. The Cheshire county people used the cat’s smiling face on their dairy products. According to Brewer’s Dictionary, “It has been said that cheese was formerly sold in Cheshire moulded like a cat that looked as though it was grinning”.

The cheese was cut from the tail end, so that the last part eaten was the head of the smiling cat.