"Kilkenny cat" meaning in All languages combined

See Kilkenny cat on Wiktionary

Noun [English]

Forms: Kilkenny cats [plural]
Etymology: Referring to an old story about two cats who fought to the death and ate each other up such that only their tails were left. Head templates: {{en-noun}} Kilkenny cat (plural Kilkenny cats)
  1. A tenacious fighter. Wikipedia link: Kilkenny cat Related terms: mutual assured destruction
    Sense id: en-Kilkenny_cat-en-noun-U1bSe3c7 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries

Inflected forms

{
  "etymology_text": "Referring to an old story about two cats who fought to the death and ate each other up such that only their tails were left.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "Kilkenny cats",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "Kilkenny cat (plural Kilkenny cats)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1979, Dervla Murphy, Wheels Within Wheels, page 66:",
          "text": "Yet for my father the war was a source of considerable inner conflict; much as he detested Nazism he was psychologically incapable of desiring a British victory. (Very likely his secret wish was that Germany and Britain should do a Kilkenny cat act.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1984, Bernard Shaw, The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, →ISBN, page 29:",
          "text": "Even pirate crews and bands of robbers prefer a peaceful settled understanding as to the division of their plunder to the Kilkenny cat plan.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2015, Emma Crewe, The House of Commons: An Anthropology of MPs at Work, page 68:",
          "text": "In the words of a member of the Press Gallery in 1967: 'Here we have 630 men and women, friendly – except for normal human antipathies – in private, and fighting like Kilkenny cats in public.'",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A tenacious fighter."
      ],
      "id": "en-Kilkenny_cat-en-noun-U1bSe3c7",
      "links": [
        [
          "tenacious",
          "tenacious"
        ],
        [
          "fighter",
          "fighter"
        ]
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "mutual assured destruction"
        }
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Kilkenny cat"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "Kilkenny cat"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "Referring to an old story about two cats who fought to the death and ate each other up such that only their tails were left.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "Kilkenny cats",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "Kilkenny cat (plural Kilkenny cats)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "mutual assured destruction"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1979, Dervla Murphy, Wheels Within Wheels, page 66:",
          "text": "Yet for my father the war was a source of considerable inner conflict; much as he detested Nazism he was psychologically incapable of desiring a British victory. (Very likely his secret wish was that Germany and Britain should do a Kilkenny cat act.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1984, Bernard Shaw, The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, →ISBN, page 29:",
          "text": "Even pirate crews and bands of robbers prefer a peaceful settled understanding as to the division of their plunder to the Kilkenny cat plan.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2015, Emma Crewe, The House of Commons: An Anthropology of MPs at Work, page 68:",
          "text": "In the words of a member of the Press Gallery in 1967: 'Here we have 630 men and women, friendly – except for normal human antipathies – in private, and fighting like Kilkenny cats in public.'",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A tenacious fighter."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "tenacious",
          "tenacious"
        ],
        [
          "fighter",
          "fighter"
        ]
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Kilkenny cat"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "Kilkenny cat"
}

Download raw JSONL data for Kilkenny cat meaning in All languages combined (1.7kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-03-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-02-21 using wiktextract (7c21d10 and f2e72e5). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.