like a cat on hot bricks

Idioms  

1. Also, like a cat on a hot tin roof. Restless or skittish, unable to remain still, as in Nervous about the lecture he had to give, David was like a cat on hot bricks. The first expression replaced a still earlier one, like a cat on a hot bake-stone, which appeared in John Ray's Proverbs (1678). The second was popularized as the title of Tennessee Williams's play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955).

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Example Sentences

He keeps on a-hindering me, hopping up and down like a cat on hot bricks.

From Dead Man's Land Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain blacks and whites by Wood, Stanley L.

Brant has been like a cat on hot bricks ever since we sighted that little town yonder, lest something should go wrong.

From A Traitor's Wooing by Hill, Headon

"When Bill walked in like a cat on hot bricks and stood there looking stuffed, that was just the Personality That Wins!"

From Indiscretions of Archie by Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville)

Dan moved round like a cat on hot bricks.

From A California Girl by Eldridge, Edward

It didn’t seem to him to be necessary to lead up to this announcement like a cat on hot bricks, considering that Lady Feo had openly flouted his chief from the first.

From The Rustle of Silk by Hamilton, Cosmo