Evidence status: UNKNOWN

A cat stealing someone's tongue sounds like the beginning of a particularly unpleasant fairy tale. Predictably, people have invented some gruesome historical explanations for it.

The evidence tells a much simpler story: nobody actually knows where it came from.

The Short Answer

“Cat got your tongue?” has been used in American English since at least the nineteenth century as a teasing question for someone who has suddenly gone quiet.

Its exact origin is unknown.

Popular explanations involving the Royal Navy's cat-o'-nine-tails, witches, medieval punishments or people's severed tongues being fed to cats have no convincing historical evidence behind them. An American newspaper example has been found from 1859, long after many of the supposed ancient origins.

What We Know

One useful clue is geography.

The earliest examples researchers have found are American.

Phrase Finder identifies an instance in Wisconsin's Racine Democrat from December 1859. A character fails to reply, prompting the question equivalent to “the cat got your tongue?” The expression receives no explanation, suggesting readers were expected to understand it already.

Another often-cited example appeared in Ballou's Monthly Magazine in 1881: “Has the cat got your tongue, as the children say?”

Those last four words are particularly interesting.

As the children say.

They point towards a playful expression already circulating orally, perhaps primarily around children, rather than some grim forgotten punishment whose meaning everyone once understood.

How It Became a Habit

The phrase was commonly directed at children who were unexpectedly silent — especially when an adult suspected they had something to confess.

Its imagery works without needing a historical event behind it.

A person should be speaking.

They aren't.

So something absurd must have happened to their tongue.

Perhaps the cat took it.

English is full of similarly impossible images that survive because they are memorable rather than literal.

The Story Everyone Tells

There are several darker versions.

One says sailors flogged with the Royal Navy's cat-o'-nine-tails were left too shocked or injured to speak.

Another claims medieval authorities cut out liars' tongues and fed them to cats.

A third invokes witches and their feline familiars somehow stealing a person's power of speech.

They certainly make better horror stories than the likely reality.

What the Evidence Actually Says

None of these stories has a documented chain connecting it to the expression.

The Royal Navy possessed the cat-o'-nine-tails, and cats were associated with witchcraft, but proving that two historical things existed is not the same as proving that one created an idiom.

More importantly, early American examples use the expression casually and sometimes specifically describe it as children's speech.

The responsible verdict is therefore:

UNKNOWN.

The phrase probably began as playful imagery, but even that remains an inference rather than a proven origin.

Why It Stuck

Because you can picture it instantly.

“Why aren't you speaking?” is ordinary.

“Has the cat got your tongue?” creates an absurd little scene in six words.

That makes it perfect for teasing someone into answering — particularly a suspiciously silent child.

Related Curiosities

Sources & Further Reading

  • Phrase Finder — nineteenth-century American evidence and assessment of the folklore explanations.
  • History — discussion of the competing origin stories and later nineteenth-century evidence.
  • Mental Floss — review of the unsupported animal-phrase theories.

Last checked: 19 September 2026