See curiosity kills the cat in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
{
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "proverb",
"head": "~kills"
},
"expansion": "curiosity kills the cat",
"name": "en-head"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "proverb",
"senses": [
{
"alt_of": [
{
"word": "curiosity killed the cat"
}
],
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English proverbs",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with 1 entry",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with entries",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
140,
163
]
],
"ref": "2001 December 11, Ian Fisher, “Sofia Journal: Posters of Hitler Rouse Talk, and Fears, in Bulgaria”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 27 May 2015:",
"text": "“When you say, ‘This guy is such a bad guy,’ people are curious,” he [Galin Jordanov] said. “And when he writes a book, people will buy it. Curiosity kills the cat. We are generating a simple form of sensation.”",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
47,
70
]
],
"ref": "2022 December 1, Olivia Land, “Missouri woman bitten after lost ‘kitten’ turned out to be a bobcat”, in New York Post, New York, N.Y.: News Corp, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 01 Dec 2022:",
"text": "A Kansas City woman learned the hard way that “curiosity kills the cat” when she picked up what she thought was a lost kitten this week – only to realize it was actually a small bobcat. The woman wound up getting bit on the thumb after seeing the small feline on the side of the road in Liberty, Missouri, and trying to help it, local cops said.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
241,
264
]
],
"ref": "2026 January 11, Jon Caramanica, “Resurrecting the Thrill of Streetwear”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC:",
"text": "Corteiz — Corteiz Rules the World is the brand’s full name — sold its first garments in 2018, and from the beginning Mr. [Clint] Ogbenna emphasized scarcity. The brand’s Instagram page was private. “Humans are just humans, innit?” he said. “Curiosity kills the cat.”",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Alternative form of curiosity killed the cat."
],
"id": "en-curiosity_kills_the_cat-en-proverb-JLX53B8u",
"links": [
[
"curiosity killed the cat",
"curiosity killed the cat#English"
]
],
"tags": [
"alt-of",
"alternative"
]
}
],
"word": "curiosity kills the cat"
}
{
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "proverb",
"head": "~kills"
},
"expansion": "curiosity kills the cat",
"name": "en-head"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "proverb",
"senses": [
{
"alt_of": [
{
"word": "curiosity killed the cat"
}
],
"categories": [
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English proverbs",
"English terms with quotations",
"Pages with 1 entry",
"Pages with entries"
],
"examples": [
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
140,
163
]
],
"ref": "2001 December 11, Ian Fisher, “Sofia Journal: Posters of Hitler Rouse Talk, and Fears, in Bulgaria”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 27 May 2015:",
"text": "“When you say, ‘This guy is such a bad guy,’ people are curious,” he [Galin Jordanov] said. “And when he writes a book, people will buy it. Curiosity kills the cat. We are generating a simple form of sensation.”",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
47,
70
]
],
"ref": "2022 December 1, Olivia Land, “Missouri woman bitten after lost ‘kitten’ turned out to be a bobcat”, in New York Post, New York, N.Y.: News Corp, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 01 Dec 2022:",
"text": "A Kansas City woman learned the hard way that “curiosity kills the cat” when she picked up what she thought was a lost kitten this week – only to realize it was actually a small bobcat. The woman wound up getting bit on the thumb after seeing the small feline on the side of the road in Liberty, Missouri, and trying to help it, local cops said.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
241,
264
]
],
"ref": "2026 January 11, Jon Caramanica, “Resurrecting the Thrill of Streetwear”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC:",
"text": "Corteiz — Corteiz Rules the World is the brand’s full name — sold its first garments in 2018, and from the beginning Mr. [Clint] Ogbenna emphasized scarcity. The brand’s Instagram page was private. “Humans are just humans, innit?” he said. “Curiosity kills the cat.”",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Alternative form of curiosity killed the cat."
],
"links": [
[
"curiosity killed the cat",
"curiosity killed the cat#English"
]
],
"tags": [
"alt-of",
"alternative"
]
}
],
"word": "curiosity kills the cat"
}
Download raw JSONL data for curiosity kills the cat meaning in English (2.3kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-08-16 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-08-05 using wiktextract (872fc7b and 4deed51). 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.