Welsh rarebit cause boby, good roasted cheese." In Boorde's account, "cause boby" is the Welsh "", meaning "baked cheese", but whether it implies a recipe like Welsh rarebit is a matter of speculation. The word "rarebit" is a corruption of "rabbit", "Welsh rabbit" being first recorded in 1725 and the variant "Welsh rarebit" being first recorded in 1785 by Francis Grose. According to the "Oxford English Dictionary", 'Welsh rarebit' is an "etymologizing alteration. There is no evidence of the independent use of rarebit". The word "rarebit" has no other use than in Welsh rabbit. "Eighteenth-century English cookbooks reveal that it was then
Dream of the Rarebit Fiend and had McCay give up comic strips in favor of editorial cartooning. McCay revived the strip in 1923–1925 as "Rarebit Reveries", of which few examples have survived. A number of film adaptations of "Rarebit Fiend" have appeared, including Edwin S. Porter's live-action "Dream of a Rarebit Fiend" in 1906, and four pioneering animated films by McCay himself: "How a Mosquito Operates" in 1912, and 1921's "Bug Vaudeville", "The Pet", and "The Flying House". The strip is said to have anticipated a number of recurring ideas in popular culture, such as marauding giant beasts damaging cities—as later popularized by "King Kong"