WILDCAT • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Wildcat

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/wˈaɪldkˌæt/ Listen

Wildcat

noun

1.

An exploratory oil well drilled in land not known to be an oil field. Synonym: wildcat well.

2.

A cruelly rapacious person. Synonyms: beast, brute, savage, wolf.

3.

Any small or medium-sized cat resembling the domestic cat and living in the wild.

adjective

1.

Outside the bounds of legitimate or ethical business practices. "Wildcat stock speculation" , "A wildcat airline" , "Wildcat life insurance schemes"

2.

Without official authorization. Synonyms: unauthorised, unauthorized. "Wildcat work stoppage"

3.

(of a mine or oil well) drilled speculatively in an area not known to be productive. "A wildcat mine" , "Wildcat drilling" , "Wildcat wells"

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Etymology of 'Wildcat'

Related searches:

European wildcat

WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University

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"Wildcat" Quotes from Famous Books

... somewhat, but since they had already served their purpose and were in process of obliteration he paid little attention to them. In his more ambitious rambles during late fall and winter, he had run across too many tracks of deer and bear and wildcat to become excited by these signs of some ...

— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... anywhere. You and him are partners, but I don't believe you know him clean to the bottom as well as I do. You wouldn't be in business with him if you did, for you are a straight man—a body can tell that by your eye and voice—and I've never heard of any shady, wildcat scheme that you ever ...

— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben

... see these markings I recognized 'em and remembered something, and I says right off that he's got some cat there; and he says how do I know? And I tell him that there kitten has got at least a quarter wildcat in it. Its grandmother, or mebbe its great-grandmother, was took up to the Tuttle Ranch when there wasn't another cat within forty miles, and it got to running round nights; and quite a long time after that they found it with a mess of kittens ...

— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... the olden time; down in a deep dell, sheltered by uplands north, east, and west; looking south down the valley to the Sussex downs, which were seen in the hazy distance uplifting their graceful outlines to the blue sky, across a vast canopy of treetops; beneath whose shade the wolf and the wildcat, the badger and the fox, yet roamed at large, and preyed upon the wild deer and the lesser game. It bore the name of Walderne, which signifies a sylvan spot frequented by the wild beasts; the castle lay beneath; the parish church rose on the summit ...

— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake

... came, he crept through the bushes to the little stream in the ravine and drank deep again. His glance caught a pair of red eyes gleaming through the dusk and he saw a wildcat treading lightly. But the cat did not snarl or arch its back. Instead it moved away without any sign of hostility and climbed a big oak, in the brown foliage of which it was lost to Henry's sight. In his mind the thought grew stronger that he was being accepted as a brother to the wild, ...

— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler

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