What does, "the devil is beating his wife" mean.?

Question

I grew up in south ga. and i've always been told that when it's raining but also sunny outside that the devil is beating his wife. Where did this originate from?

Answer 1

It's a folk term for "sunshowers".  "The devil is beating his wife" occurs not only in English, but Dutch and Hungarian as well. Other such phrases include "The devil is getting married" (Hungarian), "The devil is kissing his wife" (Tennessee), and "The devil is having a parish fair" (German).

Other phrases to explain sunshowers involves animal weddings. "The rats are getting married," one would say in Arabic, while the Bulgarians say it's "the bear" that's getting hitched. Other betrothed parties include jackals (Hindi), tigers (Korea), witches (Spain), the poor (Greece), and leopards (various African languages). One animal, the fox, crops up all over the world, from Japan to Armenia, in such phrases.

The question raised by all of this is why? Well, all of these phrases were probably serious myths at some point, concocted to explain an unusual weather event. They live on today as colorful folk sayings.

Answer 2

It means the devil's wife is a male.

Answer 3

Because the weather is doing two things at once. When you get married two become one and you can't beat up yourself.  *Haha* I am just kidding! I don't know, that was just the first thing that popped in to my brain when I read this...

Answer 4

it means " the worse stayed behind  "  you have the rain without the storm.    in Norse mythology it is Thunder god Thor that  beats his wife behind the door when the sun shines and it rains.  so the Norse myths may have be one of the origins of this saying.

you may like to read the story of Mary Bell as told by Nurse "Baba"

from the appendix of the book The Seed that was Sown in the Colony of Georgia: The Harvest and the Aftermath, 1740-1870

By Charles Spalding Wylly

Published by The Neale publishing company, 1910

it has the full  Georgia legend of the devil being disappointed in catching miss bell and going home to beat his old wife.  

Answer 5

I think it means that God is crying. It rains when bad things are about to happen and that is a sign from God. Not always but sometimes. My pastor attended a wedding where it rained and he said "this is a bad sign" and one month later, the husband murdered the bride.  

Answer 6

His wife failed to wash up, doing the ironing and bring him a beer in the nano-second between him asking and him expecting it to be done. The devil is a misogynistic pig, but he blames his troubled relationship with God rather than his own temper. She cries the rain and the sunshine is the heat of the devil's fiery fist.

Answer 7

"old wives tale,...nothing serious,..

almost like pennies from heaven,...

just superstitious sayings,...black cat crossing your path,..

don't walk under a ladder,...throw a pinch of salt over your

shoulder for good luck,..etc...etc..etc,...:)

Answer 8

That started doing the 1790.. And that is a old southern folk tale for the devil never really had a wife.....................