kitty

UK/ˈkɪti/US/ˈkɪti/

nounA22 meaningsVery rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechleans spokeninformal · an editor’s judgement

Kitty is an affectionate word for a cat, especially a young one. What you say when you are trying to coax one over.

It belongs to children and to talking to animals rather than to writing, and here kitty is the standard call. There is a completely separate and very common noun, since a kitty is a shared pot of money, so putting a fiver in the kitty for drinks is a fixed arrangement, and card games use the word the same way. The two senses are unrelated.

Definitions of kitty

1nounkittyA cat, especially a kitten.A2
“She scooped the kitty up off the doorstep.”
2nounfundA fund of money contributed to by several people.C1
“Everybody put ten pounds in the kitty.”

Also accepted in games: kitten

Where it comes from

From kitt(en) + -y. Compare Dutch katje (“kitty”). pussy (“vulva and/or vagina”) is probably modelled after the use of pussy to refer to the body part, from the appearance of an unshaven vulva.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Animals, A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 22 of A Man Called Ove.

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