Editing Cheshire Cat (section)

==Origins==
The first known appearance of the expression in literature is in the 18th&nbsp;century, in [[Francis Grose]]'s ''A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue'', Second, Corrected and Enlarged Edition (1788), which contains the following entry: {{quote|'''''Cheshire cat'''''. ''He grins like a Cheshire cat''; said of any one who shows his teeth and gums in laughing.}}

The phrase appears again in print in [[John Wolcot]]'s pseudonymous [[John Wolcot|Peter Pindar]]'s ''Pair of Lyric Epistles'' (1792):{{quote|"Lo, like a Cheshire cat our court will grin."}}

The phrase also appears in print in [[William Makepeace Thackeray]]'s novel ''[[The Newcomes]]'' (1855):<ref name="Ayto_2005">{{cite book|last1=Ayto|first1=John|title= Brewer's dictionary of phrase & fable|date=2005|publisher=Weidenfeld & Nicolson|location=London|isbn=0304357839|page=263|edition=17|url=https://archive.org/details/brewersdictionar0000ayto/page/262/mode/2up?q=%22cheshire+cat%22}}</ref>{{quote|"That woman grins like a Cheshire cat."}}

There are numerous theories about the origin of the phrase "grinning like a Cheshire Cat" in English history. A possible origin of the phrase is one favoured by the people of [[Cheshire]], a county in England which boasts numerous dairy farms; hence the cats grin because of the abundance of milk and cream.<ref>{{cite dictionary |url=http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cheshire%20cat |article=Cheshire cat |department=Definition and More |title=The Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary |encyclopedia=Merriam-Webster |year=2011 |access-date=8 August 2011}}</ref>

In 1853, [[Samuel Maunder]] offered this explanation:{{quote|This phrase owes its origin to the unhappy attempts of a sign painter of that country to represent a lion rampant, which was the crest of an influential family, on the sign-boards of many of the inns. The resemblance of these ''lions'' to ''cats'' caused them to be generally called by the more ignoble name. A similar case is to be found in the village of Charlton, between Pewsey and Devizes, Wiltshire. A public-house by the roadside is commonly known by the name of ''The Cat at Charlton''. The sign of the house was originally a lion or tiger, or some such animal, the crest of the family of Sir&nbsp;Edward Poore.<ref>{{cite book |author-link=Samuel Maunder |last=Maunder |first=Samuel |title=The Treasury of Knowledge and Library Reference |edition=12th |publisher=Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longmans |year=1853 |page=[https://archive.org/details/treasuryknowled01maungoog/page/n424 396] |url=https://archive.org/details/treasuryknowled01maungoog}}</ref>}}

According to ''[[Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable|Brewer's Dictionary]]'' (1870), "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".{{efn|This was the stated explanation in Martin Gardner's ''Annotated Alice''.<ref name=Gardner1999/>}} The cheese was cut from the tail end, so that the last part eaten was the head of the smiling cat.<ref name=Gardner1999/> A later edition of Brewer's adds another possible explanation, similar to Maunder's, that a painter in Cheshire once used to paint grinning lions on inns.<ref name="Ayto_2005"/> The dictionary does not expand further on this, its editors possibly considering the connection between cats and lions self-explanatory or obvious.

A 2015 article published in the ''Cheshire History'' journal examined these suggested origins, along with numerous others seen on the internet.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Young |first1=Peter |title=Origins of the Cheshire Cat |journal=Cheshire History |volume=55 |issue=2015–2016 |pages=184–193|quote=Numerous questionable explanations can be found on the internet for the origins of the maxim 'grinning like a Cheshire cat', including many that attribute it to the fertile mind of Lewis Carroll.{{nbsp}}... However, similar phrases have not been associated with any other areas of the country – no 'grinning like a Shropshire cat', for instance. Any real explanation must of necessity, then, be specific to Cheshire. These inventive explanations fall roughly into three groups: prehistoric origins, medieval origins, and agricultural ones. |quote-page=184 [Abstract]}} [https://www.cheshirearchives.org.uk/Publications.aspx Available by order from Chesire Archives] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230525135011/https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bx4qPuF_p_OELWxtX3NSS0lVM0k/view?resourcekey=0-0KNaYpV3ziusINGT_Jnifg |date=25 May 2023}}</ref> The author, Peter Young, considered most to be "inventive" but unlikely. In his analysis, the essential feature of any actual historical explanation would be one that demonstrated its innate connection to Cheshire: An idiom that retained the localism while spreading nationwide, would, in his view, need to be strongly connected to the county, in the minds of people elsewhere. For this reason, he favours the well-fed farm cats of Cheshire's dairying environment—a widely-known and well-promoted idea at the time the phrase arose—as the best candidate for the origin of the ''Cheshire Cat'' idiom.