catty
1 Americanadjective
-
catlike; feline.
-
slyly malicious; spiteful.
a catty gossip.
- Synonyms:
- bitchy, malevolent, nasty, mean
noun
adjective
-
informal spiteful
a catty remark
-
of or resembling a cat
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of catty1
First recorded in 1885–90; cat ( def. ) + -y 1
Origin of catty2
1545–55; < Malay kati
Explanation
Someone who's catty is mean and nasty. A catty student on a school bus might refuse to let another child sit beside him, saying, "You smell bad." If you act catty, you're malicious or snotty toward other people. The adjective is unfortunately used more often to describe females than males, but anyone who treats people nastily can be called catty. The word was originally cattish, with the same meaning — and earlier, it simply meant "pertaining to cats."
Vocabulary lists containing catty
The Field Guide to the North American Teenager
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One of Us Is Lying
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Proud
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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.
See Examples For:
The Hulu show "The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives" followed the catty fallout from the revelation among a group of Utah-based TikTok influencers, and has so far run for multiple seasons.
From Barron's ● Mar. 20, 2026
The catty media site Gawker noted that corners of the internet like 4Chan could be expected to respond with heinous pranks, without realizing how vile the rhetoric of regular people was about to get.
From Salon ● Feb. 16, 2026
When Mr. Cameron’s Na’vi growl and bare their teeth at one another, they come across as campy and catty critters—“Real Housewives of Pandora.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 17, 2025
She also teased her catty upcoming single “Él No Es Tuyo” — set for release in early March, the song notably features her former rival, Bellakath.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 20, 2025
She’s not nearly as catty these days and is becoming a real friend.
From "The Diary of a Young Girl" by Anne Frank
One cat can yield four to five catties.
From BBC ● Oct. 26, 2023
The company said it had accepted 860,000 catties of garlic in deals involving 30 homes.
From BBC ● Jul. 5, 2022
The garlic promotion attracted 852 visits and 30 transactions involving 860,000 catties of garlic during the 16 days it was available, the advertisement said.
From Reuters ● Jun. 21, 2022
Not even ten catties of gold, say refugees from Changchun, can buy an air ticket from the dying northeastern capital.
From Time Magazine Archive
This is sold at 800 taels per 100 catties, so that the whole quantity imported costs 47,600,000 taels, or £14,280,000, the price per mace being a little more than 3½d.
From A Vindication of England's Policy with Regard to the Opium Trade by Haines, Charles Reginald
The cat could be seen through a perspex dome in Schiffer's argyle-patterned backpack cat cattier - complete with plenty of air holes.
From BBC ● Jan. 25, 2024
Ages 18 to 23, they have been the hit of "collections week," though cattier observers noted one or two faux pas on the runway.
From Time Magazine Archive
She can be cattier than a back fence.
From Time Magazine Archive
Here are 16 more of the cattiest critical reactions from across the internet:
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 18, 2019
In 2009, the year that the first season of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” was broadcast, the buzziest reality shows on television tended to be the most melodramatic and cattiest — “Survivor” or “The Hills.”
From New York Times ● Jan. 24, 2018
Rancic weighed in last and, per usual, delivered the group's cattiest remarks.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 24, 2015
The liveliest, cattiest New York gossip now has shifted to the pages of Women's Wear Daily.
From Time Magazine Archive
An early feminist whose most famous play showed women at their cattiest, a formidable grande dame of high society who was one of its most caustic satirists, Luce made a career of eluding categories.
From Time Magazine Archive
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.
