Jump To:

• cat's cradle
  cat's cradle

  noun

  a children's game in which two players alternately stretch a looped string over their fingers in such a way as to produce different designs.
• Cat's Cradle
  Cat's Cradle

  noun

  a novel (1963) by Kurt Vonnegut.

cat's cradle

¹ American  

noun

1. a children's game in which two players alternately stretch a looped string over their fingers in such a way as to produce different designs.

2. the intricate design formed by the string in this game.

3. intricacy; complexity.

---

Cat's Cradle ² American  

noun

1. a novel (1963) by Kurt Vonnegut.

---

cat's cradle British  

noun

1. a game played by making intricate patterns with a loop of string between the fingers

---

Etymology

Origin of cat's cradle

First recorded in 1760–70

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

cat's cradle Cat's Cradle

By the 1880s, a cat’s cradle of submerged telegraph lines wound around the globe.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 26, 2026

The noodle master in the open kitchen stretches and twists the strings of dough as if mimicking a game of cat’s cradle.

From Seattle Times ● Mar. 3, 2022

The book is constructed like a cat’s cradle, a chronological double helix.

From New York Times ● Oct. 15, 2019

No other series has propelled such a massive yet impeccably individualized cast through such an impossibly intricate cat’s cradle of story lines that honestly should have collapsed long ago but didn’t.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 11, 2019

Did she mean that she went to their houses and played cat’s cradle, or went out for walks with them, or to secret parties at night?

From "Code Name Kingfisher" by Liz Kessler

For example, the invention the dying dictator in Cat’s Cradle refers to as “magic” is a crystalline compound that turns water to ice at room temperature.

From Science Magazine ● Nov. 10, 2022

As in Cat’s Cradle or Catch-22, humanity is trapped within an ever more vicious circle created by its own skewed logic and techno-dependency.

From The Guardian ● Mar. 6, 2021

The car that brought the vocalist Samuel T. Herring to a show at the Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro had accidentally run over his foot.

From New York Times ● Apr. 4, 2017

Courtesy of the National Bureau of Standards n Kurt Vonnegut’s 1963 novel Cat’s Cradle, a central plot element is called ice-nine.

From Slate ● Nov. 8, 2013

As promised in the list, she brought a Kurt Vonnegut book, Cat’s Cradle, and she read aloud to me, her soft voice mingling with the the frogs’ croaking and the grasshoppers landing softly around us.

From "Looking for Alaska" by John Green