Post by t-bob on Aug 8, 2019 10:03:17 GMT -5
noun
1. a person used to serve the purposes of another; tool.
Quotes
I believe these people are simply using you as a cats-paw. -- Victor Bridges, A Rogue by Compulsion, 1915 ... we should not take these fifty-one painters and sculptors ... too seriously. In a certain sense they are mere cat's-paws. -- "Are They Only Cat's-Paws?" New York Times, April 5, 1909
Origin
In English cat's-paw originally meant “a person used to serve the purposes of another; tool.” The term comes from a Le Singe et le Chat, “The Monkey and the Cat,” a fable by Jean de La Fontaine (1621–1695), the French poet and collector of fairy tales, in which a monkey persuades a cat to pull chestnuts out of hot coals that the chestnuts are roasting in and promises to share the chestnuts with the cat. The cat scoops the chestnuts one by one out of the coals, burning his paw in the process, while the monkey eats up the chestnuts. A maid enters the room, stopping all the action, and the cat gets nothing for its pains. Both nautical senses, “a light breeze on the surface of the water” and "a kind of knot made in the bight of a rope,” date from the second half of the 18th century. Cat's-paw entered English in the second half of the 17th century
1. a person used to serve the purposes of another; tool.
Quotes
I believe these people are simply using you as a cats-paw. -- Victor Bridges, A Rogue by Compulsion, 1915 ... we should not take these fifty-one painters and sculptors ... too seriously. In a certain sense they are mere cat's-paws. -- "Are They Only Cat's-Paws?" New York Times, April 5, 1909
Origin
In English cat's-paw originally meant “a person used to serve the purposes of another; tool.” The term comes from a Le Singe et le Chat, “The Monkey and the Cat,” a fable by Jean de La Fontaine (1621–1695), the French poet and collector of fairy tales, in which a monkey persuades a cat to pull chestnuts out of hot coals that the chestnuts are roasting in and promises to share the chestnuts with the cat. The cat scoops the chestnuts one by one out of the coals, burning his paw in the process, while the monkey eats up the chestnuts. A maid enters the room, stopping all the action, and the cat gets nothing for its pains. Both nautical senses, “a light breeze on the surface of the water” and "a kind of knot made in the bight of a rope,” date from the second half of the 18th century. Cat's-paw entered English in the second half of the 17th century