CAT'S-PAW • E-FREE TRANSLATION.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

... by the absorption of a lifetime's experience. I know that it was Mrs. Bliven's husband—we always called her that, of course—who expected to arrest the pair of them as they crossed the Dubuque ferry; and that I was made a cat's-paw in slipping her past her pursuers and saving Bliven from arrest. I know that Buckner Gowdy was a wild and turbulent rakehell in Kentucky and after many bad scrapes was forced to run away from the state, and was given his huge plantation of "worthless" land—as he ...

— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick

... such times, simply an oven, the air of which is too hot to breathe! Under such circumstances with what eagerness does the long-enduring seaman scan the polished surface of the sleeping ocean in search of the little smudge of faint, evanescent blue, the cat's-paw that betrays the presence of some wandering eddy in the stagnant air which, even though it be too feeble and insignificant to move the ship by so much as a single inch, may at least afford his fevered body the momentary relief of a suggestion of comparative ...

— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood

... most Americans, when a hard and fast alliance with Great Britain is suggested to them, usually formulates itself in the statement that they have no wish to be made into a cat's-paw for pulling England's chestnuts out of the fire. America has no desire to be drawn into England's quarrels. Until less than ten years ago, there was justification for the point of view; for while England seemed to ...

— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... Amsterdam were far too busy to attend to my affairs. They were in the midst of equipping an armament to land on Irish shores and strike at England with the cat's-paw of an Irish rebellion. The place was full of Irishmen, some of whom honestly enough looked to see their country redeemed by Dutch saviours; others, hungry hangers-on, seeking what profit to themselves they could secure from the venture. A few faces, even during the ...

— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed

... him keenly, with hesitating suspicions. "Ah! Duke Stephen's cat's-paw! I remember you—well!" But before the words were fairly out of her mouth, ...

— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger

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