Felines have inspired some picturesque terms. In parts of the Midwestern United States, the term cat beer can mean “milk.” The term cat hair is sometimes used as a synonym for “money,” and cat ice is “thin ice.” Cat face refers to the mark on a tomato freshly plucked from the vine. Cat’s face is also used for “a wrinkle or pucker in clothing that’s not ironed correctly.” In her book I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou writes of having to iron seven stiff starched shirts “and not leave a cat’s face anywhere.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Cat Beer, Cat Hair, and Cat’s Face”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette. I was going through one of our favorite reference works, the Dictionary of American Regional English, and I realized that there are an awful lot of regional terms that involve the word cat.
Cat.
And cats.
C-A-T, cat.
C-A-T. For example, do you know what cat beer is?
I hesitate to guess, given how often cats vomit.
I hadn’t thought about that.
At least they have the grace on the dogs not to reconsume it.
It has nothing to do with…
Oh, I don’t know. What’s cat beer?
Cat beer is a term that you hear in the north, at least in Minnesota and in Vermont, that means milk.
Oh, how about that?
Cat beer.
Cat beer.
Yeah.
What about cat hair?
It’s not the cat hair.
No.
Actual cat hair.
It’s something else.
No.
Would this be, I don’t know, cat hair?
You might say of somebody, he’s certainly got the cat hair.
Whiskers on your face for not shaving?
I don’t know.
Money.
That’s money?
They had citations from Oklahoma and Ohio.
Cat hair.
To have the cat hairs to have money.
Yeah.
How about that?
Sure.
And cat ice is another one I really liked.
Cat ice?
Not cat eyes?
No, not cat eyes.
Who’s that?
What’s that?
Cat ice is really, really thin ice.
It’s either because, well, here’s one citation from Wisconsin that says, cat ice forms in depressions in fields, edges of pools, just like glass.
It looks like the eye of a cat with bubbles in the ice, or a cat would break it stepping on it.
Oh, I know that kind of ice.
Yeah.
I know that.
And one more, cat face.
Oh, sure.
I know that one.
We have citations for that on our website.
Oh, okay.
So these are fruits, vegetables, especially tomatoes, where they kind of grow with some weird splits in the side, like the way the cat’s mouth is shaped.
Mm—
Yeah.
Yeah, or the way that a tomato looks when you pull it off the vine, you know, that part where it connected to the vine.
Oh, yeah.
Well, it looks like the little triangular shape of a cat’s face.
Yeah.
There are actually a couple of other definitions for cat face.
One is a scar or not on a tree.
Oh, yeah.
But the one that I really like is the one that’s used largely in the African-American community in the South.
And it means a wrinkle or pucker in clothing when ironed too dry.
In fact, Maya Angelou wrote in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, I had to iron seven-star shirts and not leave a cat’s face anywhere.
Oh, how about that?
Yeah.
I didn’t know that one.
I know.
So many picturesque terms involving cats.
This is A Way with Words.
We talk about language.
We welcome your calls, your emails, and your tweets.
Email words@waywordradio.org or talk to us on Twitter @wayword.
