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cat

Pronunciation: /ˈkæt/

The English word “cat” has 20 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A mammal of the family Felidae.
  2. A carnivorous, four-legged, generally furry domesticated species (Felis catus) of feline animal, commonly kept as a house pet.
  3. The flesh of this animal eaten as food.
  4. Any similar, chiefly non-domesticated, carnivorous mammal of the family Felidae, which includes bobcats, caracals, cheetahs, cougars, leopards, lions, lynxes, tigers, and other such species.
  5. Chiefly with a descriptive word: an animal not of the family Felidae which (somewhat) resembles a domestic feline (etymology 1, noun sense 1.1.1).
  6. An angry or spiteful person, especially a woman.
  7. An ordinary person, especially a man; a fellow, a guy.
  8. Synonym of itinerant worker.
  9. A jazz musician; also, an enthusiast of jazz music.
  10. Synonym of prostitute.
  11. A double tripod for holding a plate, etc., with six feet, of which three rest on the ground in whatever position it is placed.
  12. The game of trap ball; also (countable), the trap in that game.
  13. The pointed piece of wood that is struck in the game of tipcat.
  14. A strong tackle used to hoist an anchor to the cathead of a ship.
  15. Now only in catboat: a sturdy merchant sailing vessel.
  16. A wheeled shelter, used in the Middle Ages to protect assailants approaching besieged enemy defences; a cathouse.
  17. A vagina or vulva.

verb

  1. To hoist (an anchor) by its ring so that it hangs at the cathead.
  2. To flog with a cat-o'-nine-tails.
  3. To vomit.

Etymology

From Middle English cat, catte, from Old English catt (“male cat”), catte (“female cat”), from Proto-West Germanic *kattu, from Proto-Germanic *kattuz, generally thought to be from Late Latin cattus (“domestic cat”) (c. 350, Palladius), from Latin catta (c. 75 A.D., Martial), possibly from an Afroasiatic language. Doublet of gato. A loan from Afro-Asiatic into European languages would roughly…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.