"cat-and-mouse" meaning in All languages combined

See cat-and-mouse on Wiktionary

Adjective [English]

Audio: en-au-cat-and-mouse.ogg [Australia]
Head templates: {{en-adj|-}} cat-and-mouse (not comparable)
  1. (idiomatic) suspenseful, involving alternating roles of attack and defence. Tags: idiomatic, not-comparable
    Sense id: en-cat-and-mouse-en-adj-nAFOorEz

Noun [English]

Audio: en-au-cat-and-mouse.ogg [Australia]
Head templates: {{en-noun|-}} cat-and-mouse (uncountable)
  1. Alternative form of cat and mouse Tags: alt-of, alternative, uncountable Alternative form of: cat and mouse
    Sense id: en-cat-and-mouse-en-noun-HSV-AKSv

Verb [English]

Audio: en-au-cat-and-mouse.ogg [Australia] Forms: cat-and-mouses [present, singular, third-person], cat-and-mousing [participle, present], cat-and-moused [participle, past], cat-and-moused [past]
Head templates: {{en-verb}} cat-and-mouse (third-person singular simple present cat-and-mouses, present participle cat-and-mousing, simple past and past participle cat-and-moused)
  1. To engage in a game of cat and mouse.
    (intransitive) To mutually monitor and challenge each other in an attempt to gain advantage.
    Tags: intransitive
    Sense id: en-cat-and-mouse-en-verb-4~v7-BYs Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 33 8 53 7
  2. To engage in a game of cat and mouse.
    (transitive) To toy with (one's victim).
    Tags: transitive
    Sense id: en-cat-and-mouse-en-verb-UNR3a26C

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for cat-and-mouse meaning in All languages combined (6.8kB)

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          "text": "Does that produce a different dynamic when they meet in battle?\n‘It does,’ said Hoy. ‘I tell myself that it doesn’t matter who you race against, you try to expose their weaknesses. The only difference is that they know your weaknesses. It just makes it a bit more of a mind game, a cat-and-mouse strategy.",
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          "ref": "2000, Arthur Plotnik, Elements of Authorship",
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          "type": "quotation"
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        {
          "ref": "2014, Robert Wintner, 1969 and Then Some",
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          "type": "quotation"
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          "ref": "2017, Suzanne M. Adema, Speech and Thought in Latin War Narratives: Words of Warriors",
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          "type": "quotation"
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          "type": "quotation"
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        {
          "ref": "2014, Robert Wintner, 1969 and Then Some",
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          "type": "quotation"
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          "type": "quotation"
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          "ref": "1979, Diana Cooper, Autobiography, page 560",
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          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2004, Fritz Leiber, Ben J. S. Szumskyj, S. T. Joshi, Fritz Leiber and H.P. Lovecraft: Writers of the Dark, page 301",
          "text": "This is the reason too for the cat-and-mousing of Wilmarth: the Plutonians must spend hours making hintful revelations to him after they have him in their power, simply because this will maximize his scare. Lovecraft must cat-and-mouse with us as well, interminably exploiting the hesitations and reluctances of his narrator to tell us what the basic horror is.",
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-12 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (ae36afe and 304864d). 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.