cat \cat\ (k[a^]t), n. [AS. cat; akin to D. & Dan. kat, Sw.
katt, Icel. k["o]ttr, G. katze, kater, Ir. cat, W. cath,
Armor. kaz, LL. catus, Bisc. catua, NGr. ga`ta, ga`tos, Russ.
& Pol. kot, Turk. kedi, Ar. qitt; of unknown origin. Cf.
Kitten.]
1. (Zool.) Any animal belonging to the natural family
Felidae, and in particular to the various species of the
genera Felis, Panthera, and Lynx. The domestic cat
is Felis domestica. The European wild cat ({Felis
catus) is much larger than the domestic cat. In the
United States the name wild cat is commonly applied to
the bay lynx ({Lynx rufus). The larger felines, such as
the lion, tiger, leopard, and cougar, are often referred
to as cats, and sometimes as big cats. See Wild cat, and
Tiger cat.
[1913 Webster +PJC]
Note: The domestic cat includes many varieties named from
their place of origin or from some peculiarity; as, the
Angora cat; the Maltese cat; the Manx cat; the
Siamese cat.
[1913 Webster]
Laying aside their often rancorous debate over
how best to preserve the Florida panther, state
and federal wildlife officials,
environmentalists, and independent scientists
endorsed the proposal, and in 1995 the eight cats
[female Texas cougars] were brought from Texas
and released. . . .
Uprooted from the arid hills of West Texas, three
of the imports have died, but the remaining five
adapted to swamp life and have each given birth
to at least one litter of kittens. --Mark Derr
(N. Y. Times,
Nov. 2, 1999,
Science Times
p. F2).
[PJC]
Note: The word cat is also used to designate other animals,
from some fancied resemblance; as, civet cat, fisher
cat, catbird, catfish shark, sea cat.
[1913 Webster]
2. (Naut.)
(a) A strong vessel with a narrow stern, projecting
quarters, and deep waist. It is employed in the coal
and timber trade.
(b) A strong tackle used to draw an anchor up to the
cathead of a ship. --Totten.
[1913 Webster]
3. A double tripod (for holding a plate, etc.), having six
feet, of which three rest on the ground, in whatever
position it is placed.
[1913 Webster]
4. An old game; specifically:
(a) The game of tipcat and the implement with which it is
played. See Tipcat.
(b) A game of ball, called, according to the number of
batters, one old cat, two old cat, etc.
[1913 Webster]
5. same as cat o' nine tails; as, British sailors feared
the cat.
[1913 Webster + WordNet 1.5]
6. A catamaran.
[PJC]
Angora cat, blind cat, See under Angora, Blind.
Black cat the fisher. See under Black.
Cat and dog, like a cat and dog; quarrelsome; inharmonious.
"I am sure we have lived a cat and dog life of it."
--Coleridge.
Cat block (Naut.), a heavy iron-strapped block with a large
hook, part of the tackle used in drawing an anchor up to
the cathead.
Cat hook (Naut.), a strong hook attached to a cat block.
Cat nap, a very short sleep. [Colloq.]
Cat o' nine tails, an instrument of punishment consisting
of nine pieces of knotted line or cord fastened to a
handle; -- formerly used to flog offenders on the bare
back.
Cat's cradle, game played, esp. by children, with a string
looped on the fingers so, as to resemble small cradle. The
string is transferred from the fingers of one to those of
another, at each transfer with a change of form. See
Cratch, Cratch cradle.
To bell the cat, to perform a very dangerous or very
difficult task; -- taken metaphorically from a fable about
a mouse who proposes to put a bell on a cat, so as to be
able to hear the cat coming.
To let the cat out of the bag, to tell a secret, carelessly
or willfully. [Colloq.]
Bush cat, the serval. See Serval.
[1913 Webster]
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
Cat \Cat\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Catted; p. pr. & vb. n.
Catting.] (Naut.)
To bring to the cathead; as, to cat an anchor. See Anchor.
--Totten.
[1913 Webster]
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
Cat o' nine tails \Cat" o' nine" tails`\, cat-o'-nine-tails
\cat"-o'-nine"-tails`\n.
1. a whip used as an instrument of punishment consisting of
nine pieces of knotted line or cord fastened to a handle;
-- formerly used to flog offenders on the bare back; --
called also the cat. It was used in the British Navy to
maintain discipline on board sailing ships.
Syn: cat.
[WordNet 1.5 +PJC] Catopter
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
cat
n 1: feline mammal usually having thick soft fur and being unable
to roar; domestic cats; wildcats [syn: true cat]
2: an informal term for a youth or man; "a nice guy"; "the
guy's only doing it for some doll" [syn: guy, hombre,
bozo]
3: a spiteful woman gossip; "what a cat she is!"
4: the leaves of the shrub Catha edulis which are chewed like
tobacco or used to make tea; has the effect of a euphoric
stimulant; "in Yemen kat is used daily by 85% of adults"
[syn: kat, khat, qat, quat, Arabian tea, African
tea]
5: a whip with nine knotted cords; "British sailors feared the
cat" [syn: cat-o'-nine-tails]
6: a large vehicle that is driven by caterpillar tracks;
frequently used for moving earth in construction and farm
work [syn: Caterpillar]
7: any of several large cats typically able to roar and living
in the wild [syn: big cat]
8: a method of examining body organs by scanning them with X
rays and using a computer to construct a series of
cross-sectional scans along a single axis [syn: computerized
tomography, computed tomography, CT, computerized
axial tomography, computed axial tomography]
v 1: beat with a cat-o'-nine-tails
2: eject the contents of the stomach through the mouth; "After
drinking too much, the students vomited"; "He purged
continuously"; "The patient regurgitated the food we gave
him last night" [syn: vomit, vomit up, purge, cast,
sick, be sick, disgorge, regorge, retch, puke,
barf, spew, spue, chuck, upchuck, honk, regurgitate,
throw up] [ant: keep down]
[also: catting, catted]
WordNet (r) 2.0
128 Moby Thesaurus words for "cat":
Abyssinian cat, Adamite, Angora cat, Argus, Cheshire cat,
Chinchilla cat, Himalayan cat, Maltese cat, Manx cat, Persian cat,
alley cat, barf, bastard, being, belt, bird, blacksnake, bloke,
blue cat, blue devils, blues, body, boy, buck, bugger, bullwhack,
bullwhip, calico cat, cascade, cast, chap, character, coon cat,
cowhide, creature, crop, customer, dods, dorts, duck, dumps, eagle,
earthling, feline, feller, fellow, ferret, flagellum, frumps, gee,
gent, gentleman, gib, gib-cat, grimalkin, groundling, grumps, guy,
hand, hawk, head, heave, homo, horsewhip, house cat, human,
human being, individual, jasper, joker, kit, kitling, kitten,
kitty, kitty-cat, knout, kurbash, lad, lash, life, living soul,
lynx, man, mopes, mortal, mouser, mulligrubs, mumps, nose, one,
party, person, personage, personality, pouts, puke, puss, pussy,
pussycat, quirt, rawhide, razor strap, scourge, silver cat, single,
sjambok, somebody, someone, soul, spew, strap, stud, sulks,
sullens, tabby, tabby cat, tellurian, terran, thong, throw up,
tiger cat, tom, tomcat, tortoise-shell cat, weasel, whip, whiplash,
worldling
Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0
CAT
Central Alaska Time [-1000] (TZ)
Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (Version 1.9, June 2002)
CAT
Common Authentication Technology (IETF, RFC 1511)
Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (Version 1.9, June 2002)
CAT
Computer Aided Technology (fair)
Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (Version 1.9, June 2002)
CAT
Computer Aided Telephony
Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (Version 1.9, June 2002)
CAT
Computer Aided Testing
Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (Version 1.9, June 2002)
cat [from `catenate' via {Unix `cat(1)'] vt. 1. [techspeak] To spew
an entire file to the screen or some other output sink without pause
(syn. blast). 2. By extension, to dump large amounts of data at an
unprepared target or with no intention of browsing it carefully. Usage:
considered silly. Rare outside Unix sites. See also dd, BLT.
Among Unix fans, `cat(1)' is considered an excellent example of
user-interface design, because it delivers the file contents without
such verbosity as spacing or headers between the files, and because it
does not require the files to consist of lines of text, but works with
any sort of data.
Among Unix haters, `cat(1)' is considered the canonical example of
_bad_ user-interface design, because of its woefully unobvious name. It
is far more often used to blast a file to standard output than to
concatenate two files. The name `cat' for the former operation is just
as unintuitive as, say, LISP's cdr.
Of such oppositions are holy wars made.... See also UUOC.
Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001)
CAT
Common Abstract Tree Language. R. Voeller & Uwe Schmidt, U
Kiel, Germany 1983. Universal intermediate language, used by
Norsk Data in their family of compilers. "A Multi-Language
Compiler System with Automatically Generated Codegenerators,
U. Schmidt et al, SIGPLAN Notices 19(6):202-2121 (June 1984).
[{Jargon File]
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03)
cat
(From "catenate") Unix's command which copies one or
more entire files to the screen or some other output sink
without pause.
See also dd, BLT.
Among Unix fans, cat is considered an excellent example of
user-interface design, because it delivers the file contents
without such verbosity as spacing or headers between the files
(the pr command can be used to do this), and because it does
not require the files to consist of lines of text, but works
with any sort of data.
Among Unix haters, cat is considered the canonical example
of *bad* user-interface design, because of its woefully
unobvious name. It is far more often used to blast a file
to standard output than to concatenate files. The name "cat"
for the former operation is just as unintuitive as, say,
LISP's cdr.
Of such oppositions are holy wars made.
(1994-11-29)
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03)
CAT, n. A soft, indestructible automaton provided by nature to be
kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle.
This is a dog,
This is a cat.
This is a frog,
This is a rat.
Run, dog, mew, cat.
Jump, frog, gnaw, rat.
Elevenson
THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY ((C)1911 Released April 15 1993)
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