Cat - Dictionary Definition and Overview

Cat :  (noun)
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, CAT] (verb)
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]

Based on WordNet 2.0

Cat : \Cat\, n. [AS. cat; akin to D. & Dan. kat, Sw. kett, Icel. k["o]ttr, G. katze, kater, Ir. Cat, W. cath, Armor. kaz, LL. catus, Bisc. catua, NGr. ?, ?, Russ. & Pol. cot, Turk. kedi, Ar. qitt; of unknown origin. CF. Ketten.] 1. (Zo["o]l.) An animal of various species of the genera Felis 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) See Wild cat, and Tiger cat.

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.

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.

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.

3. A double tripod (for holding a plate, etc.), having six feet, of which three rest on the ground, in whatever position in is placed.

4. An old game; (a) The game of tipcat and the implement with which it is played. See Tipcat. (c) A game of ball, called, according to the number of batters, one old cat, two old cat, etc.

5. A cat o' nine tails. See below.

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 let the cat out of the bag, to tell a secret, carelessly or willfully. [Colloq.]

Bush cat, the serval. See Serval.

Based on Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary

Cat : \Cat\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. tted; p. pr. & vb. n. Catting.] (Naut.) To bring to the cathead; as, to cat an anchor. See Anchor. --Totten.

Based on Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary

Cat : 

(Based on "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)



Based on the Online Dictionary of Computing [Computer_Dictionary]:

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]



Based on the Online Dictionary of Computing [Computer_Dictionary]:

Cat :  Central Alaska Time [-1000] (TZ)





Based on Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (Version 1.9, June 2002) [Acronyms_Dictionary]:

Cat :  Common Authentication Technology (IETF, RFC 1511)





Based on Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (Version 1.9, June 2002) [Acronyms_Dictionary]:

Cat :  Computer Aided Technology (fair)





Based on Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (Version 1.9, June 2002) [Acronyms_Dictionary]:

Cat :  Computer Aided Telephony





Based on Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (Version 1.9, June 2002) [Acronyms_Dictionary]:

Cat :  Computer Aided Testing





Based on Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (Version 1.9, June 2002) [Acronyms_Dictionary]:

Cat : [from_`catenate'_via_{Unix">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.

Based on Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (Version 1.9, June 2002) [Acronyms_Dictionary]:

Example Usage of Cat

MissusLippy: RT @librarian_holly: http://bit.ly/1sKb9k Advanced Cat yodeling
mimi_mir: @labradors LOL "smells of wee", well once it's not Cat wee it's bearable so suck it up!!!! ;P
MissusLippy: RT @librarian_holly: http://bit.ly/NStIP Cat yodeling
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