Meaning
To smile or grin very broadly, showing the teeth, usually with unshakeable or unexplained good humour. Often suggests a smile that is fixed, secretive, or out of proportion to the occasion, and it is frequently said of children and of grins that refuse to fade. Informal and playful; for most readers the image is permanently coloured by the Alice in Wonderland character. Regional use: British English (origin); now General English.
Origin
The expression long predates Lewis Carroll. Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (2nd edition, 1788) records 'He grins like a Cheshire cat; said of any one who shews his teeth and gums in laughing', and Peter Pindar (John Wolcot) rhymed 'Lo, like a Cheshire cat our court will grin' in Pair of Lyric Epistles (1792). Thackeray used it in The Newcomes (1854-55) before Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) made the cat world-famous; Carroll, who was born in Cheshire, plainly borrowed the existing saying. Why Cheshire cats should grin is genuinely unknown. The competing 19th-century theories - Cheshire cheeses moulded as cats, inn-sign lions so badly painted they looked like grinning cats, the county's dairies keeping its cats contented, or a pun on 'cheeser cat' - are all later speculation, and reference works treat the derivation as unsettled.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- a Cheshire cat grin
- grin like a Cheshire cat eating cheese
- grinning like a Cheshire cat
- smile like a Cheshire cat
Usage Examples
- Megan grinned like a Cheshire cat all through the graduation ceremony, camera-ready from the first name called.
- He wore the expression of a Cheshire cat after the audit, refusing to say why he was so pleased.
- When the twins appeared, grinning like Cheshire cats, their mother knew the biscuit tin was already empty.