"tear a cat" meaning in All languages combined

See tear a cat on Wiktionary

Verb [English]

Forms: tears a cat [present, singular, third-person], tearing a cat [participle, present], tore a cat [past], torn a cat [participle, past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|tear<,,tore,torn> a cat}} tear a cat (third-person singular simple present tears a cat, present participle tearing a cat, simple past tore a cat, past participle torn a cat)
  1. (obsolete, idiomatic, acting) To overact; to violently rant and rave on stage. Tags: idiomatic, obsolete Categories (topical): Acting Synonyms: chew the scenery, ham, ham it up, melodramatize, overact Related terms: tear-cat

Inflected forms

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "tears a cat",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "tearing a cat",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "tore a cat",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "torn a cat",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "tear<,,tore,torn> a cat"
      },
      "expansion": "tear a cat (third-person singular simple present tears a cat, present participle tearing a cat, simple past tore a cat, past participle torn a cat)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
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          "source": "w"
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        {
          "kind": "other",
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        },
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        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Acting",
          "orig": "en:Acting",
          "parents": [
            "Art",
            "Culture",
            "Society",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "c. 1595–1596, William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, act 1, scene 2:",
          "text": "Yet my chief humour is for a tyrant. I could play / Ercles rarely, or a part to tear a cat in, to make all split.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "c. 1599, John Marston, Histriomastix, act 5, scene 1, page [53]:",
          "text": "Sirha is this you would rend and teare the Cat / Upon a Stage, and now march like drown'd rat?",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1835, George Daniel, “The Conversazione”, in The Modern Dunciad, William Pickering, page 224:",
          "text": "Till, in his periwig combustion / Will. Shakespeare sounds like Irish fustian, / In which Macready tears a cat, / And Shiel, the patriot, writes so pat;",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1970, Alfred Rossi, Minneapolis Rehearsals: Tyrone Guthrie Directs Hamlet, University of California Press, →ISBN, page 21:",
          "text": "From this performance there is no doubt in anyone's mind that Hamlet is an amateur actor having a fling at histrionics, or as Guthrie might say, \"tearing a cat.\"",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To overact; to violently rant and rave on stage."
      ],
      "id": "en-tear_a_cat-en-verb-HQkDF3i0",
      "links": [
        [
          "acting",
          "acting#Noun"
        ],
        [
          "overact",
          "overact"
        ],
        [
          "rant",
          "rant"
        ],
        [
          "rave",
          "rave"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(obsolete, idiomatic, acting) To overact; to violently rant and rave on stage."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "tear-cat"
        }
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "chew the scenery"
        },
        {
          "word": "ham"
        },
        {
          "word": "ham it up"
        },
        {
          "word": "melodramatize"
        },
        {
          "word": "overact"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic",
        "obsolete"
      ],
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        "acting",
        "broadcasting",
        "entertainment",
        "film",
        "lifestyle",
        "media",
        "television",
        "theater"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "tear a cat"
}
{
  "forms": [
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      "form": "tears a cat",
      "tags": [
        "present",
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    },
    {
      "form": "tearing a cat",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "tore a cat",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "torn a cat",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
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      "args": {
        "1": "tear<,,tore,torn> a cat"
      },
      "expansion": "tear a cat (third-person singular simple present tears a cat, present participle tearing a cat, simple past tore a cat, past participle torn a cat)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "tear-cat"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
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        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English predicates",
        "English terms with obsolete senses",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English verbs",
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        "Pages with entries",
        "en:Acting"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "c. 1595–1596, William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, act 1, scene 2:",
          "text": "Yet my chief humour is for a tyrant. I could play / Ercles rarely, or a part to tear a cat in, to make all split.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "c. 1599, John Marston, Histriomastix, act 5, scene 1, page [53]:",
          "text": "Sirha is this you would rend and teare the Cat / Upon a Stage, and now march like drown'd rat?",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1835, George Daniel, “The Conversazione”, in The Modern Dunciad, William Pickering, page 224:",
          "text": "Till, in his periwig combustion / Will. Shakespeare sounds like Irish fustian, / In which Macready tears a cat, / And Shiel, the patriot, writes so pat;",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1970, Alfred Rossi, Minneapolis Rehearsals: Tyrone Guthrie Directs Hamlet, University of California Press, →ISBN, page 21:",
          "text": "From this performance there is no doubt in anyone's mind that Hamlet is an amateur actor having a fling at histrionics, or as Guthrie might say, \"tearing a cat.\"",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To overact; to violently rant and rave on stage."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "acting",
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        ],
        [
          "overact",
          "overact"
        ],
        [
          "rant",
          "rant"
        ],
        [
          "rave",
          "rave"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(obsolete, idiomatic, acting) To overact; to violently rant and rave on stage."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic",
        "obsolete"
      ],
      "topics": [
        "acting",
        "broadcasting",
        "entertainment",
        "film",
        "lifestyle",
        "media",
        "television",
        "theater"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "chew the scenery"
    },
    {
      "word": "ham"
    },
    {
      "word": "ham it up"
    },
    {
      "word": "melodramatize"
    },
    {
      "word": "overact"
    }
  ],
  "word": "tear a cat"
}

Download raw JSONL data for tear a cat meaning in All languages combined (2.5kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-11-06 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-10-02 using wiktextract (fbeafe8 and 7f03c9b). 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.