cat's whisker

noun

1. cat whisker.

cat's whisker

noun

1. a pointed wire used to make contact with the crystal in a crystal radio receiver

2. any wire used to make contact with a semiconductor

Word History and Origins

Origin of cat's whisker¹

First recorded in 1910–15

Example Sentences

Austria's Alessandro Haemmerle wins gold "by a cat's whisker" after a dramatic photo finish in the men's snowboard cross final.

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“This is a woman who is waiting on unemployment benefits, she has a 5-month-old kid, and she did everything she was supposed to do and she only escaped eviction by a cat’s whisker,” he said later.

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However the following day he told her she had "escaped immediate custody by a cat's whisker".

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As president, he kept the number “118,573” tucked in his suit pocket, to remind him of the cat’s whisker margin of his popular-vote victory and the need to keep his campaign promise.

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Shouldn’t we expect all our elected representatives to be so conversant with the scientific issues of the day that explanations of quantum computing by any one of them should barely twitch a cat’s whisker?

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