cat
Part of speech: verb
adj
Morphological type: simple
Topics: nautical
transport
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.
A loan from Afro-Asiatic into European languages would roughly match how the animal itself spread, as genetic studies suggest domestic cats began to spread out of the Near East / Fertile Crescent during the Neolithic, especially after they became popular and domesticated in Egypt 4000 years ago; they were found in Greece and Italy later, 2500 years ago. 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), which has long been thought to be non-Arabic in origin. 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 gato (“cat”), Breton kaz, kazh (“cat”), Cornish cath, kath (“cat”), Irish cat, cut (“cat”), Scottish Gaelic cat (“cat”), Welsh cath (“cat”), as well as Ancient Greek κάτα (káta), κάττα (kátta, “cat”), Greek γάτα (gáta, “cat”), Turkish kedi (“cat”), and from the same ultimate source Belarusian, Russian кот (kot, “cat”), Ukrainian кіт (kit, “cat”), Polish kot (“cat”), Kashubian kòt (“cat”), Latvian kaķis (“cat”), Lithuanian katė (“cat”), and more distantly Armenian կատու (katu, “cat”), Basque katu (“cat”), Georgian კატა (ḳaṭa, “cat”), Classical Syriac ܩܛܐ, ܩܛܘ (“cat”), Arabic قِطَّة (qiṭṭa, “cat”) alongside dialectal Maghrebi Arabic قَطُّوس (qaṭṭūs, “cat”) (from Berber, probably from Latin).
Inflected forms:
form: cats
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: catting
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: catted
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: catted
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: To hoist (an anchor) by its ring so that it hangs at the cathead.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: The anchors were catted at the bows of the yacht […]
gloss: To flog with a cat-o'-nine-tails.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
gloss: To vomit.
pos: verb
tags: archaic
slang
examples: ‘He's going to cat, Maxim,’ said the Pussum warningly. The suave young Russian rose and took Halliday by the arm, leading him away.
gloss: To go wandering at night.
pos: verb
examples: "He doesn't realize that I know," Lord Callan said, "but it's been pretty obvious that most of his catting about London's darker alleys has been a search for his origins.
This was going to be my first try at catting out. I went looking for somebody to cat with me.
My own dear wife could have tended to his needs if she hadn't been out catting.
gloss: To gossip in a catty manner.
pos: verb
examples: Men from young to middleaged, with matt faces, vivacious and brightly dressed, catted together in gay groups.
They smiled, touched, rolled their eyes and raised their eyebrows, as they relived the audition and catted about some of their competition.
In the story, Lady Ina gossiped and catted about a parade of the rich and famous—Jackie Kennedy looking like an exaggerated version of herself, Princess Margaret so boring she made people fall asleep, Gloria Vanderbilt so ditzy she didn't recognize her first husband.
gloss: Catastrophic; terrible, disastrous.
pos: adj
tags: Ireland
colloquial
not-comparable
examples: The weather was cat, so they returned home early.
Related words: feline
kitten
kitty
meow
miaow
mog
moggie
moggy
nine lives
purr
Schrödinger’s cat
tabby
Translations: