cat

   This term has a long history, dating back to the thirteenth century, as an insulting description of a spiteful person, especially a back-biting woman. From the fifteenth to the eighteenth century it was also a slang term for a prostitute. In modern slang it can still refer to a black American who dresses in a flashy manner, to a jazz musician, to a hepcat, or - in the language of ‘cool’ speakers - to any man. Addressed to a woman, ‘cat’ is usually an insult; addressed to a man it is usually complimentary. In Shaw’s Arms and the Man occurs: Sergius. Tiger cat! Raina: (running excitedly to Bluntschli) You hear this man calling me names, Captain Bluntschli? Bluntschli: What else can he do, dear lady? He must defend himself somehow. In Pygmalion, another of Shaw’s plays, Eliza Doolittle tries at one point to scratch Higgins’s face. ‘Claws in, you cat,’ he tells her. See also Cheshire cat, you old.