CAT'S-PAW • FREE-TRANSLATOR.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

... the proud, obstinate fighting blood of the Guiscards got up in him. He would not be made a cat's-paw. If she exasperated him further he would forget about being a gentleman, and act as a savage man, and seize her in his arms and ...

— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn

... advise Lenine and Trotzky to disguise their American propaganda by using the Industrial Unions of Russia as their cat's-paw? We ask this because Hillquit has long been "Councillor" in America to the Russian Soviet Republic,[L] while the above method of inflaming American labor unions has been the secret method of the Socialist Party's Rand School of Science ...

— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto

... now at an end. Though the Federalists had sinned first, the fact nevertheless remained that in realizing their purpose the Republican majority had established a precedent which threatened to make of the lower Federal Judiciary the merest cat's-paw of party convenience. The attitude of the Republican leaders was even more menacing, for it touched the security of the Supreme Court itself in the enjoyment of its highest prerogative and so imperiled the ...

— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin

... better the case for his countryman that, being an accomplice in the crime, making himself the leader in the persecution against the helpless girl, he was willing to be all this in the spirit, and with the conscious vileness of a cat's-paw. Never from the foundations of the earth was there such a trial as this, if it were laid open in all its beauty of defence and all its hellishness of attack. Oh, child of France! shepherdess, peasant girl! trodden under foot by all around thee, how I honour thy flashing intellect, ...

— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey

... 'And, Clare, do you mean to say that you are not aware that your daughter has been engaged to Mr. Preston for some time— years, I believe,—and has at last chosen to break it off,—and has used the Gibson girl—I forget her name,—as a cat's-paw, and made both her and herself the town's talk—the butt for all the gossip of Hollingford? I remember when I was young there was a girl called Jilting Jessy. You'll have to watch over your young lady, or she will get ...

— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

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