No room to swing a cat
Beautiful Maskless People
Last Monday, the Korean government lifted the outdoor mask mandate. Now people are free to walk around without a mask. Most people are still wearing masks, however. In my town there aren’t many maskless people walking around but I went to a larger city recently to play board games with friends. Most people were still wearing masks but I saw a lot of people without masks. And, I have to say, everyone looks so beautiful. I think it has been too long since I saw strangers faces. I am sure they were just normal people, but it is good to see a few new faces. It got me to wondering if larger cities had more maskless people. I would think it would be more dangerous in those crowded cities. There’s no room to swing a cat in Seoul, so there is a higher chance of a new infection spreading.
Seoul’s subways are especially crowded during rush hour. It is hell for someone like me. You really have to squeeze in enough to let the door close. I heard that students are instructed to wear their backpack on their front to conserve space. Having ridden on crowded subways with a backpack on my back, I an say it is probably a good idea.
Meaning
I have to admit that I had not heard this phrase before seeing it in the 27 idioms picture (posted a few weeks ago). No room to swing a cat means that there isn’t much room. It is meant to be used in a humorous sense. I have no idea why someone would want to swing a cat around, but if there isn’t enough room to swing it, you might be in a confined space. It can also be used to describe a crowded place.
Example (confined space) – You want me to live in this apartment? There’s no room to swing a cat in here.
Example (crowded) – I took the subway in Seoul and there was not enough room to swing a cat.
Origin
No room to swing a cat was first recorded in 1665 and might allude to the cat-o-nine-tails, a type of whip used by the British military to punish people. We have already discussed a couple other idioms related to this weapon: cat got your tongue, the cat’s out of the bag. You have to need some room to swing the cat-o-nine-tails for it to be effective. There normally wasn’t enough room below deck, so officers would use this punishing tool above deck where there was more room. So, today’s phrase may be saying that the area is too small to use a whip.
Dictionary.com claims that it was first recorded in 1771 without a reference and Grammar Monster claims it dates to the 16th century. Thankfully, wordhistories cites Medela pestilentiae wherein is contained several queries concerning the plague, with approved antidotes, signes and symptom : also an exact method for curing that epidemicial distemper, humbly presented to the Right Honourable and Right Worshipful the lord mayor and seriffs of the city of London (1665) by Richard Kephale. Wow, the titles of book back then were WAY too long! Anyways, the Medela pestilentiae claims that the poor more likely to get the plague because of living in crowded / confined spaces, “They had not space enough (according to the vulgar saying) to swing a Cat in; so hot by reason of the closeness, and so nastily kept bedsides, that it even took away a mans breath to put his head but within doors.” This also suggests that the phrase was well established by that point. If the phrase was in use by 1665, it seems unlikely that it is a reference to the cat-o-nine-tails. The weapon doesn’t appear until 1695 in literature.
Cat Game
Another idea is that no room to swing a cat is an allusion to a game that involved hanging a cat in a wooden bottle. The cat was placed in the wooden bottle with some soot. Then, a player would break the bottom of the bottle as they can by. If they could break the bottle and escape the falling cat, they were the winner. Shakespeare referenced this game in Much Ado About Nothing (1599). I really hope this is just a myth and no one ever was so cruel.
Dead Cats Now?
There is a newer phrase (1980s) that is related to today’s expression. It is, “you can't swing a dead cat without hitting.” This phrase means that something is always close by.
Example – In Korea, you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a coffee shop.
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Resources:
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/not-enough-room-to-swing-a-cat
https://www.grammar-monster.com/sayings_proverbs/Not_enough_room_to_swing_a_cat.htm
https://wordhistories.net/2017/05/09/no-room-to-swing-a-cat/
https://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-nor1.htm