cat

Etymology tree

Proto-Germanic *kattuz

Proto-West Germanic *kattu

Old English catt

Middle English cat

English cat

From Middle English cat, catte, from Old English catt (“male cat”), catte (“female cat”), from Proto-West Germanic *kattu, from Proto-Germanic *kattuz, generally thought to be from Late Latin cattus (“domestic cat”) (c. 350, Palladius), from Latin catta (c. 75 A.D., Martial), possibly from an Afroasiatic language. Doublet of gato.

A loan from Afro-Asiatic into European languages would roughly match how the animal itself spread, as genetic studies suggest domestic cats first began to spread out of the Near East / Fertile Crescent during the Neolithic, especially after they became popular and domesticated in Egypt 4000 years ago; they were found in Greece and Italy later, 2500 years ago. However, every proposed source word has presented problems. Adolphe Pictet and many subsequent sources refer to Barabra (Nubian) [script needed] (kaddîska) and "Nouba" (Nobiin) ⲕⲁⲇⲓ̄ⲥ (kadīs, “kadīs”) as possible sources or cognates, but M. Lionel Bender says the Nubian word is a loan from Arabic قِطَّة (qiṭṭa), which has long been thought to be non-Arabic in origin. Jean-Paul Savignac suggests the Latin word is from an Egyptian precursor of Coptic ϣⲁⲩ (šau, “tomcat”) suffixed with feminine -t, but John Huehnergard says "the source … was clearly not Egyptian itself, where no analogous form is attested."

It may be a wanderword. Kroonen says the word must have existed in Germanic from a very early date, as it shows morphological alternations, and suggests that it might have been borrowed from Uralic, compare Northern Sami gađfe (“female stoat”) and Hungarian hölgy (“stoat; lady, bride”) from Proto-Uralic *käďwä (“female (of a fur animal)”).

Cognates

Related to Scots cat (“cat”), North Frisian kaat, kaot, Kat, kåt (“cat”), Saterland Frisian Kat (“cat”), West Frisian kat (“cat”), Alemannic German Chats, Chatz, chatza, chatzu, chatzò, chàzzà, Kàtz (“cat”), Bavarian ckozza, Katz, khoze, kòtze (“cat”), Cimbrian katze, khatz, khatza (“cat”), Dutch kat (“cat”), German Katze (“cat”), German Low German Katt (“cat”), Luxembourgish Kaz (“cat”), Mòcheno kòtz (“cat”), Yiddish קאַץ (kats, “cat”), Danish kat (“cat”), Faroese køttur (“cat”), Icelandic köttur (“cat”), Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk and Swedish katt (“cat”), Latin cattus, catus (“cat”), Aromanian cãtush (“cat”), French chat (“cat”), Occitan, Norman cat (“cat”), Portuguese, Spanish gato (“cat”), Breton kaz, kazh (“cat”), Cornish cath, kath (“cat”), Irish cat, cut (“cat”), Scottish Gaelic cat (“cat”), Welsh cath (“cat”), as well as Ancient Greek κάτα (káta), κάττα (kátta, “cat”), Greek γάτα (gáta, “cat”), Turkish kedi (“cat”), and from the same ultimate source Belarusian, Russian кот (kot, “cat”), Ukrainian кіт (kit, “cat”), Polish kot (“cat”), Kashubian kòt (“cat”), Latvian kaķis (“cat”), Lithuanian katė (“cat”), and more distantly Armenian կատու (katu, “cat”), Basque katu (“cat”), Georgian კატა (ḳaṭa, “cat”), Classical Syriac ܩܛܐ, ܩܛܘ (“cat”), Arabic قِطَّة (qiṭṭa, “cat”) alongside dialectal Maghrebi Arabic قَطُّوس (qaṭṭūs, “cat”) (from Berber, probably from Latin).