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

See Examples For:

like a cat on hot bricks

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 Headon Hill

He sent men up to the masthead to keep a good look-out, an' he was dancing about like a cat on hot bricks all the morning.

From Many Cargoes by W. W. (William Wymark) Jacobs

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 Stanley L. Wood

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 Cosmo Hamilton

"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 P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse