CREATING
Curiosity killed the cat
CREATING
Inquisitiveness can lead to dangerous situations
What’s behind a phrase? More importantly, what’s ahead of the phrase? In today’s Knowledge
Economy, people are encouraged to be inquisitive. But ingrained into the people culture is the
old adage ‘Curiosity killed the cat’. This story and the one on the following page will help you
get over it!
By Gary Martin
Everyone knows that, despite its supposed
nine lives, curiosity killed the cat. Well, not
quite. 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 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:
28 SMART PEOPLE
“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 known printed reference that
uses the curiosity form is O. Henry’s Schools and
Schools, 1909:
“Curiosity can do more things than kill
a cat; and if emotions, well recognized as
feminine, are inimical to feline life, then
jealousy would soon leave the whole world
catless.”
The earliest version that I have found of the
precise current form of the proverb in print is
from The Portsmouth Daily Times, March 1915,
in a piece headed “The Height of Curiosity”:
Mother - “Don’t ask so many questions,
child. Curiosity killed the cat.”
Willie - “What did the cat want to know,
Mom?”
The frequent rejoinder to “curiosity killed
the cat” is “satisfaction brought it back.” That
brings us to the follow-up story on the next
page where we learn the state of curiosity in
the 21st century.
Gary Martin, aka The Phrase Finder, posts
information on more than 50,000 phrases at www.
phrases.org.uk