tabby
pronunciation
How to pronounce tabby in British English:
UK [ˈtæbi]
How to pronounce tabby in American English:
US [ˈtæbi]
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- Noun:
- a cat with a gray or tawny coat mottled with black
- female cat
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- Adjective:
- having a gray or brown streak or a pattern or a patchy coloring; used especially of the patterned fur of cats
Word Origin
- tabby
- tabby: [17] By a bizarre series of etymological twists and turns, the tabby cat commemorates a textile manufacturing suburb of Baghdad. This was al-‘Attābīya, named after Prince Attāb, who lived there. The cloth made there was known as ‘attābī, and the term passed via Old French atabis and modern French tabis into English as tabby. This originally denoted a sort of rich silk taffeta (‘This day … put on … my false tabby waistcoat with gold lace’ noted Samuel Pepys in his diary for 13 October 1661), but since such cloth was originally usually striped, by the 1660s the word was being applied to brindled cats.
- tabby (n.)
- 1630s, "striped silk taffeta," from French tabis "a rich, watered silk" (originally striped), from Middle French atabis (14c.), from Arabic 'attabi, from 'Attabiyah, a neighborhood of Baghdad where such cloth was made, said to be named for prince 'Attab of the Omayyad dynasty. As an adjective from 1630s. Tabby cat, one with a striped coat, is attested from 1690s; shortened form tabby first attested 1774. "The wild original of the domestic cat is always of such coloration" [Century Dictionary]. Sense of "female cat" (1826) may be influenced by the fem. proper name Tabby, a pet form of Tabitha, which was used in late 18c. as slang for "spiteful spinster, difficult old woman."
Example
- 1. Tabby grows old . She cannot run any more .
- 2. Tabby is my birthday present from grandma .
- 3. Big cats or wolves seem like scaled-up versions of the tabby or terrier sleeping on your sofa .
- 4. She lived defiantly alone except for binky , her tabby cat .
- 5. By the next week , I had a gray tabby with snowcapped paws peering at me from the laundry basket in the closet .