Portal:Cheshire/Quotes/23
Grinning like a Cheshire Cat. This phrase owes its origin to the unhappy attempts of a sign painter of that country to represent a lion rampant, which was the crest of an influential family, on the sign-boards of many of the inns. The resemblance of these lions to cats caused them to be generally called by the more ignoble name.
On the origin of the Cheshire Cat, from The Treasury of Knowledge and Library Reference by Samuel Maunder (1853)