Other forms: cats
A cat is the soft pet that meows and hunts mice. A black cat, feed the cat, the cat is out.
The male is a tom and the young a kitten. Cats were domesticated in the Near East about nine thousand years ago and arguably domesticated themselves, since they came for the mice around grain stores. The idioms are many: let the cat out of the bag, meaning to reveal a secret; raining cats and dogs; curiosity killed the cat; and no room to swing a cat.
1nouncatA soft pet that meows and hunts mice.
“The cat sleeps about eighteen hours a day and complains about the rest.”
cat is an animal.
Also accepted in games: kitten
Latin cattus arrived in most European languages at about the same time, and its own origin is probably African. Almost every language from Ireland to Turkey has a version of it, which is unusual and suggests the animal travelled with its name.
Middle English
cat
English, today
cat
Built from
From Middle 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 Latin cattus (“domestic cat”) (c. 350, Palladius), from Latin catta (c. 75 A.D., Martial), possibly from an afa language. a 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 first 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) and "Nouba" (Nobiin) ⲕⲁⲇⲓ̄ⲥ (“kadīs”) as possible sources or cognates,Otto Keller, Die antike Tierwelt, vol. 1: Säugetiere (Leipzig, 1909), 75; Walther von Wartburg, ed. Französisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, vol. 2 (Basel: R. G.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA