cats and dogs

[ostap77]

Do we still say "It was raining cats and dogs." Is there another way to say that?

[Tullia]

I still say it and hear it all the time.

You could also say (all very/reasonably colloquial):

It is/was bucketing it down.
It is/was coming down in buckets.
It is/was coming down in sheets.

And then there's this (vulgar)

It's pissing it down.


I've always liked The heavens (have) opened but that is quite specific, it tends to refer to it starting to rain, rather than just being raining.


I'm sure others can come up with some more options and variants too.

[ostap77]

I still say it and hear it all the time.

You could also say (all very/reasonably colloquial):

It is/was bucketing it down.
It is/was coming down in buckets.
It is/was coming down in sheets.

And then there's this (vulgar)

It's pissing it down.


I've always liked The heavens (have) opened but that is quite specific, it tends to refer to it starting to rain, rather than just being raining.


I'm sure others can come up with some more options and variants too.

[BobK]

I still say it and hear it all the time.

You could also say (all very/reasonably colloquial):

It is/was bucketing it down.
It is/was coming down in buckets.
It is/was coming down in sheets.

And then there's this (vulgar)

It's pissing it down.


I've always liked The heavens (have) opened but that is quite specific, it tends to refer to it starting to rain, rather than just being raining.


I'm sure others can come up with some more options and variants too.

Also 'Raining/coming down like/in stair-rods'. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stair_rod)

As modern stair carpets often do without stair-rods, this image is becoming rather dated.

There's also the (rather over-worn, in my view) 'Nice weather for ducks'

b

[5jj]

Do we still say "It was raining cats and dogs." Is there another way to say that?

I read somewhere recently that examination of one corpus revealed that 90% of the citations for this expression were from English Language books. Hmmm.

Unfortunately I can't track down where I read that.

[riquecohen]

Very common in AmE: It`s pouring.