Kilkenny cats
Americanplural noun
Etymology
Origin of Kilkenny cats
First recorded in 1815–25
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Efforts to get the Chamber's "Sacred Truce" into legal form set Deputies of all factions fighting like Kilkenny cats.
From Time Magazine Archive
Mad as Kilkenny cats, the farmers went ahead, felling trees across the road and cutting telephone and telegraph wires.
From Time Magazine Archive
With a 20-year tradition of amiable meetings, this time the American Society of Newspaper Editors wrangled like Kilkenny cats.
From Time Magazine Archive
“They’ll be like the Kilkenny cats, and leave only their tails behind!”
From The White Squall A Story of the Sargasso Sea by J. Schonberg
And so the griffin that was made of a lion and an eagle perished, exactly as if it had been made of Kilkenny cats.
From The Book of Dragons by H. Granville Fell
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
