Learn English – Who’s ‘she’, the cat’s mother

etymology

I'm wondering where the phrase originates.

Who's 'she', the cat's mother?

(idiomatic, somewhat dated, Britain, New England)
A rebuke especially directed towards children for having referred to a woman as "she", instead of using her name or an appropriately respectful title.

"She's coming on the trip with us too!"
"Who's 'she', the cat's mother?"
"Sorry, gran is coming with us too."
— wiktionary

From grammarphobia.com, etc., can see it goes back to at least 1897 but I'm having problems finding the origin.

I see various discussions on Yahoo, Word Origins but so far nothing authorative.

Here are the OED’s citations for such reprimands, which date from the late 19th century:

“Don’t call your mamma ‘she.’ ‘She’ is a cat” (from The Beth Book, by Frances Macfall, writing as Sarah Grand, 1897).

“ ‘Who’s She?’ demanded Nurse. ‘She’s the cat’s
mother’ ” (from Compton Mackenzie’s novel Sinister Street, 1913).
— grammarphobia.com

EDIT.
One 100% unsubstantiated theory I read was she was short for she-cat, so particularly unsuitable for referring to female elders within earshot, but who knows if this has any truth!

And where did the cat come from? Well, a male cat is a tom; a female cat is a she, or more often, a she-cat. So, 'she' is for cats. (And Not Your Mother!)
— everything2.com

Best Answer

Not the first use, but rather the first use I can find in print of "cat's mother" is this from a play produced at the Globe Theatre in 1870:

cat's mother1 1870
cat's mother2 1870

The white cat! or, Prince Lardi-Dardi & the radiant Rosetta, Burnand, F. C. (Francis Cowley), produced at the Globe Theatre, 1870.

Later evidence strongly suggests the origin is a folk phrase commonly (but not always; see the note from "A. J. M.") used as an reproof or correction for children. For example, this excerpt from Notes & Queries of May 25, 1878 (source of the first OED attestation of the phrase):

cat's mother1 1878
cat's mother2 1878

Bede's note provoked a series of responses in Notes & Queries. Among the responses were these:

cat's mother3 1878

Notes & Queries of June 25, 1878.

cat's mother4 1878
cat's mother5 1878
cat's mother6 1878

Notes & Queries of July 27, 1878

cat's mother7 1878

Notes & Queries of Sept. 21, 1878

cat's mother8 1879

Notes & Queries of Nov. 15, 1879

Searches for "cat's aunt", "cat's grandmother" and "cat's father" were not especially productive, although a finding of "cat's aunt" in the 1877 A glossary of words used in the wapentakes of Manley and Corringham, Lincolnshire (Peacock, Edward; as mentioned in the foregoing series of responses from Notes & Queries of July 27, 1878) did serve to reinforce that the use of the phrase, and its variants, was widespread in England in the mid-1800s:

Cat's Aunt. When a person talking of another says 'she' without having mentioned her name, his hearer usually says, by way of reproof, 'She's the cat's aunt;' i.e. the word she might have that significance. Common in London.

Similarly, another publication for the English Dialect Society, the 1894 Folk Phrases of Four Counties (Glouc., Staff., Warw., Worc.) sourced this to Warwickshire:

Her's the cat's mother. Warw. Said to one who uses the possessive her of the third person instead of the nominative she.

So, the grammatical complaint registered by the "cat's mother" phrase extended beyond the bald she to the use of her in place of she.

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