CAT'S-PAW • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Cat's-paw

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/kæts-pɔ/ Listen

noun

Cat's-paw n.

(Naut.)

(a)

A light transitory air which ruffles the surface of the water during a calm, or the ripples made by such a puff of air.

(b)

A particular hitch or turn in the bight of a rope, into which a tackle may be hooked.

A dupe; a tool; one who, or that which, is used by another as an instrument to a accomplish his purposes. Note: In this sense the term refers to the fable of the monkey using the cat's paw to draw the roasting chestnuts out of the fire.

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Etymology of 'Cat's-paw'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Cat's-paw" Quotes from Famous Books

... time—but then this was most important—Mrs. Fisher addressed Mrs. Wilkins directly. She was sixty-five, and cared very little what sorts of women she happened to be with for a month, but if the women were to be mixed with men it was a different proposition altogether. She was not going to be made a cat's-paw of. She had not come out there to sanction by her presence what used in her day to be called fast behaviour. Nothing had been said at the interview in London about men; if there had been she would have declined, ...

— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim

... have come to the place," he thought. "Perhaps the young fellow has been making a cat's-paw of me all the time, and has gone to church and got married, ha! ha! ha! that would be a joke; but by-the-bye it's out of canonical hours; he ...

— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston

... disgraceful history, and a disastrous end—that it would be used by the General for the purposes of stealing, and that the head of it would not be content to share the plunder with others. He had no wish to be his principal's cat's-paw, or to be identified with an enterprise in which, deprived of both will and voice, he should get neither profit nor credit. ...

— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... ultimate action of the Legislature had been really brought about by a lifelong friend of Colonel Langdon, the senior Senator from the State, James Stevens, who had not hesitated to flatter Norton and use him as a cat's-paw. This use the Hon. Charles Norton seemed to consider an honor of large proportions. Not every first-term Congressman can hope for intimacy with a Senator. Norton believed that his work for Langdon would win him the family's gratitude and thus further his ambition ...

— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise

... tiresome heather in the "forest primeval?" After all, Betty had not said the thing was wood; but when Sibyl had asked her she had said, "Have it so if you like." Oh! Sibyl felt just now that she had been made a sort of cat's-paw, and that she did not like Fanny ...

— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade

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