Meaning
A warning that prying into things that are not your business, or poking at what should be left alone, can lead you into danger or trouble. Typically said to someone asking unwanted questions or snooping. Often answered jokingly with 'but satisfaction brought it back'. Informal and usually friendly or teasing, though it can carry a genuinely cautionary edge. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The modern proverb evolved from the much older 'care killed the cat', in which 'care' meant worry or grief. That form is first recorded in Ben Jonson's Every Man in His Humour (1598), 'care'll kill a Cat', and is echoed in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing (1599); Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable was still documenting the 'care' version in 1898. When and how 'curiosity' replaced 'care' is not established. Wikipedia traces the earliest curiosity wording to the Irish newspaper the Waterford Mirror and Tramore Visiter (1868) and the exact modern wording to James Allan Mair's Handbook of Proverbs (1873), which lists it as an Irish proverb; The Phrase Finder instead cites a Galveston newspaper item of 1898 about a 'Thomas cat' as the earliest known version. The comic rejoinder 'but satisfaction brought it back' appears in American newspapers between 1905 and 1912, and O. Henry's casual use of the proverb in 1909 shows it was widely known by then. The common attribution to Eugene O'Neill, whose 1920 play Diff'rent merely quotes it, is mistaken.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- Care killed the cat
- Curiosity killed a cat
- Curiosity killed the cat and satisfaction brought it back
- Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back
Usage Examples
- Stop asking about the layoffs - curiosity killed the cat, remember.
- Curiosity killed the cat, my grandmother used to warn me whenever I rummaged through her drawers.
- He opened the envelope marked 'private and confidential', and curiosity very nearly killed this particular cat.