cat

😺

Meaning

1. An animal of the family Felidae:
2. An animal of the family Felidae:
3. An animal of the family Felidae
4. The meat of this animal, eaten as food.
5. A person:
6. A person:
7. (slang) A person:
8. (slang) A person:
9. A strong tackle used to hoist an anchor to the cathead of a ship.
10. Short for cat-o'-nine-tails.
11. A sturdy merchant sailing vessel (now only in "catboat").
12. The game of trap ball.
13. The game of trap ball.
14. The pointed piece of wood that is struck in the game of tipcat.
15. (slang) A vagina or vulva.
16. A double tripod (for holding a plate, etc.) with six feet, of which three rest on the ground, in whatever position it is placed.
17. A wheeled shelter, used in the Middle Ages as a siege weapon to allow assailants to approach enemy defences.

cat

feline

kitten

pussy

wildcat

domestic cat

kitty

Iriomote cat

puss

guy

true cat

cat-o’-nine-tails

vomit

tomcat

barf

be sick

cast

puke

regorge

regurgitate

sick

spew

spue

throw up

vomit up

African tea

Arabian tea

kat

khat

qat

quat

tom

chuck

disgorge

honk

purge

retch

upchuck

big cat

Caterpillar

bozo

hombre

hep-cat

hipster

female cat

native

catlike

mountain lion

cat-

pussycat

tomahawk

alligator

gib

hepcat

malkin

queen

catalyst

catalytic

caterpillar

he-cat

male cat

she-cat

mouser

purr

chick

felid

flagellate

flog

horsewhip

scourge

switch

feral cat

pusseek

tomker

genet

kittie

clam

cunt

snatch

cooche

jack

wild

wildcats

Frequency

Pronounced as (IPA)

/kæt/

From Middle English cat, catte, from Old English catt (“male cat”), catte (“female cat”), from Proto-West Germanic *kattu, from Proto-Germanic *kattuz. Further etymology is unclear. Further etymology and cognates. The Germanic word is generally thought to be from Late Latin cattus (“domestic cat”) (c. 350, Palladius), from Latin catta (c. 75 A.D., Martial), from an Afroasiatic language. 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). 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 Wanderwort. 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)”). Related to Scots cat, West Frisian kat, North Frisian kåt and kaat, Dutch kat, Danish kat, Norwegian katt, Swedish katt, German Low German Katt and Katte, German Katze, Alemannic German Chatz, Icelandic köttur, Afrikaans kat, Latin cattus, French chat, Norman cat, Occitan cat, Portuguese gato, Spanish gato, Aromanian cãtush, Scottish Gaelic cat, Irish cat, Breton kazh, Welsh cath, Cornish kath, as well as Ancient Greek κάττα (kátta), Greek γάτα (gáta), Turkish kedi, and from the same ultimate source Russian кот (kot), Ukrainian кіт (kit), Belarusian кот (kot), Polish kot, Kashubian kòt, Lithuanian katė, and more distantly Armenian կատու (katu), Basque katu, Arabic قِطَّة (qiṭṭa) alongside dialectal Maghrebi Arabic قَطُّوس (qaṭṭūs) (from Berber, probably from Latin).