cat
Meanings
- Terms relating to animals.
- A mammal of the family Felidae.
- A carnivorous, four-legged, generally furry domesticated species (Felis catus) of feline animal, commonly kept as a house pet.
- The flesh of this animal eaten as food.
- 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.
- 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).
- Terms relating to people.
- An angry or spiteful person, especially a woman.
- An ordinary person, especially a man; a fellow, a guy.
- Synonym of itinerant worker.
- A jazz musician; also, an enthusiast of jazz music.
- Synonym of prostitute.
- To hoist (an anchor) by its ring so that it hangs at the cathead.
- To flog with a cat-o'-nine-tails.
- To vomit.
- To go wandering at night.
- To gossip in a catty manner.
- A program and command in Unix that reads one or more files and directs their content to the standard output.
- To apply the cat command to (one or more files).
- To dump large amounts of data on (an unprepared target), usually with no intention of browsing it carefully.
- A street name of the drug methcathinone.
- Abbreviation of catapult.
- Abbreviation of catalytic converter.
- Abbreviation of catamaran.
- Abbreviation of category.
- Abbreviation of catfish.
- Abbreviation of caterpillar.
- Any of a variety of earth-moving machines. (from their manufacturer Caterpillar Inc.)
- A ground vehicle which uses caterpillar tracks, especially tractors, trucks, minibuses, and snow groomers.
- Abbreviation of computed axial tomography; often used attributively, as in “CAT scan” or “CT scan”.
- Catastrophic; terrible, disastrous.
- A diminutive of the female given names Catherine or Caitlin.
- A piece of heavy machinery, such as a backhoe or bulldozer, of the Caterpillar brand. (Occasionally, loosely, any big yellow machine of the type.)
- A Catalina flying boat.
- Acronym of Central Atlas Tamazight.
- Acronym of computer-adaptive test.
- Acronym of common admission test.
- Acronym of civil air transport.
- Acronym of clear-air turbulence.
- Acronym of computed axial tomography.
- Acronym of career aptitude test.
- Acronym of computer-assisted/aided translation.
- Acronym of credit authorization terminal.
- Acronym of citizenship advancement training.
- Acronym of computer-aided transceiver.
- Acronym of cosmic anisotropy telescope.
- Centre for Alternative Technology
- Counter Assault Team
- Citizens Area Transit
- Canadian Achievement Tests
- Cambridge Antibody Technology
- Abbreviation of Caterpillar Inc..
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Germanic *kattuz Proto-West Germanic *kattu Old English catt Middle English cat English cat 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. This would roughly match how domestic cats themselves spread, as genetic studies suggest they began to spread out of the Near East / Fertile Crescent during the Neolithic (being in Cyprus by 9500 years ago, and Greece and Italy by 2500 years ago), especially after they became popular in Egypt. However, every proposed source word has presented problems. Adolphe Pictet and many subsequent sources refer to Barabra (Nubian) [script needed] (kaddîska) and "Nouba" (Nobiin) ⲕⲁⲇⲓ̄ⲥ (kadīs, “kadīs”) as possible sources or cognates, but M. Lionel Bender says the Nubian word is a loan from Arabic قِطَّة (qiṭṭa). Ibn Duraid dismissed Arabic قِطَّة (qiṭṭa) as non-Arabic in origin, whereas the more "proper" term in Arabic is the now-rare Arabic سِنَّوْر (sinnawr). Jean-Paul Savignac suggests the Latin word is from an Egyptian precursor of Coptic ϣⲁⲩ (šau, “tomcat”) suffixed with feminine -t, but John Huehnergard says "the source … was clearly not Egyptian itself, where no analogous form is attested." It may be a wanderword. Kroonen says the word must have existed in Germanic from a very early date, as it shows morphological alternations, and suggests that it might have been borrowed from Uralic, compare Northern Sami gađfe (“female stoat”) and Hungarian hölgy (“stoat; lady, bride”) from Proto-Uralic *käďwä (“female (of a fur animal)”). Cognates Related to Scots cat (“cat”), North Frisian kaat, kaot, Kat, kåt (“cat”), Saterland Frisian Kat (“cat”), West Frisian kat (“cat”), Alemannic German Chats, Chatz, chatza, chatzu, chatzò, chàzzà, Kàtz (“cat”), Bavarian ckozza, Katz, khoze, kòtze (“cat”), Cimbrian katze, khatz, khatza (“cat”), Dutch kat (“cat”), German Katze (“cat”), German Low German Katt (“cat”), Luxembourgish Kaz (“cat”), Mòcheno kòtz (“cat”), Yiddish קאַץ (kats, “cat”), Danish kat (“cat”), Faroese køttur (“cat”), Icelandic köttur (“cat”), Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk and Swedish katt (“cat”), Latin cattus, catus (“cat”), Aromanian cãtush (“cat”), French chat (“cat”), Occitan, Norman cat (“cat”), Portuguese, Spanish ga