Other forms: wildcats
A wildcat is a small fierce undomesticated cat. A Scottish wildcat, the wildcat's stripes, wildcat conservation.
The Scottish one is close to extinct as a pure animal, since breeding with domestic cats has all but dissolved it into the population. As an adjective it means unofficial, so a wildcat strike is one called without union approval.
1nounwildcatA small fierce undomesticated cat.
“A wildcat hissed at us from the rocks before disappearing into the forest.”
wildcat is an animal.
Middle English wyld cat is wild plus cat, with the same compound across the Germanic languages.
Middle English
wyld cat
English, today
wildcat
From Middle English wyld cat, wylde cat (in the plural as wild cattes, wylde catis, wyle cattes), equivalent to wild + cat. Cognate with Middle Low German wiltkatte, German Wildkatze, Swedish vildkatt. Its adjectival senses were originally American and derived from the "wildcat banks" of Michigan, following its elevation to statehood in 1837. Two laws—one easing the requirements for establishing a new bank and another occasioned by the Panic of 1837 that removed the need for payment in specie—led to the creation and collapse of around 50 banks within two years. The term is apocryphally derived from a wildcat supposedly featured on the currency printed by one of these banks, but more probably derived from the remote locations "where the wildcats roamed" chosen by these banks to avoid oversight and minimize redemption of notes.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA