resorting to a quasi-proverbial expression like ‘Heads you win, tails I lose’ or ‘Damned if you do, damned if you don’t’. Oddly, though, Heller had originally numbered it 18 (apparently Catch-18 was dropped to avoid confusion with Leon Uris’s novel Mila-18). In the book, the idea is explored several times. Captain Yossarian, a US Air Force bombardier, does not wish to fly any more missions. He goes to see the group’s MO, Doc Daneeka, about getting grounded on the grounds that he is crazy: Daneeka: ‘There’s a rule saying I have to ground anyone who’s crazy.’ Yossarian: ‘Then why can’t you ground me? I’m crazy.’ Daneeka: ‘Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn’t really crazy.’ ‘This is the catch – Catch-22.’
(a) categorical denial An inevitable pairing, date of origin unknown. A cliché by the 1970s in public relations, political and journalistic use. ‘Mr Weisfeld said he had “reason to believe” that Philip Green, the former chairman of Amber Day, was connected with the Pepkor bid. This is despite a categorical denial of such a link from Pepkor…He had asked Pepkor if Mr Green was linked with its bid. The reply was a categorical denial. And a categorical denial from a man like Pepkor’s chairman, Christo Wiese, has to be taken seriously’ – The Independent (10 May 1994); ‘But Price Waterhouse in London issued a categorical denial. A spokesman said the firm was “extremely upset” about the reports’ – The Sunday Telegraph (12 March 1995).
(has the) cat got your tongue? Question put to a person (usually young) who is not saying anything, presumably through guilt. Since the mid-19th century and a prime example of nanny-speak, as in Casson/ Grenfell. A challenge to the mute. The OED2’s earliest citation is H. H. Harper, Bob Chadwick (1911): ‘I was so angry at her that I…made no answer…Presently she said, “Has the cat got your tongue?”’
(a) cat has nine lives A proverbial saying (known by 1546). But why so many? While cats have an obvious capacity for getting out of scrapes – literally ‘landing on their feet’ in most cases – in ancient Egypt, they were venerated for ridding the country of a plague of rats and were linked to the trinity of Mother, Father and Son. ‘To figure out how many extra lives the cat had, the Egyptians multiplied the sacred number three, three times, and arrived at nine’ – Robert L. Shook, The Book of Why (1983).
catholic See IS THE POPE.
(a) cat house A brothel. In Catwatching (1986), Desmond Morris traces this term (mostly US use) from the fact that prostitutes have been called ‘cats’ since the 15th century, ‘for the simple reason that the urban female cat attracts many toms when it is on heat and mates with them one after the other’. As early as 1401, Morris adds, men were warned of the risk of chasing ‘cat’s tail’ – women. Hence the slang word ‘tail’ to denote the female genitals (and compare ‘pussy’).
(not to have a) cat in Hell’s chance Meaning, ‘to have no chance whatsoever’ – the full expression makes the phrase clear: ‘No more chance than a cat in hell without claws’ – which is recorded in Grose (1796).
cat on a hot tin roof From the (mostly US) expression ‘as nervous as a cat on a hot tin roof’ that derives from the common English expression ‘like a cat on hot bricks’, meaning ‘ill-at-ease, jumpy’. John Ray in his Collection of English Proverbs (1670–8) has ‘to go like a cat upon a hot bake stone’. Another English proverbial expression (known by 1903) is ‘Nervous as cats’. In the play Cat On a Hot Tin Roof (1955; film US 1958) by Tennessee Williams, the ‘cat’ is Maggie, Brick’s wife, ‘whose frayed vivacity’, wrote Kenneth Tynan, ‘derives from the fact that she is sexually ignored by her husband’.
cat’s eyes Lines of light-reflecting studs placed to demarcate traffic lanes at night. Known as such by 1940. Hence, ‘Cat’s Eyes’ Cunningham, nickname of Group Capt. John Cunningham (1917–2002), distinguished RAF night fighter pilot in the Second World War. Even when navigational aids were not available he managed to shoot down twelve German aircraft.
(a) cat’s paw Meaning ‘someone used as a tool by another’, this term was known in Britain by 1657 and chiefly derives from one of La Fontaine’s fables, ‘The Monkey and the Cat’, in which a monkey persuades a cat to pick up chestnuts off a hot stove. ‘The Cat’s Paw’ is the title of a painting (1824) by Sir Edwin Landseer, illustrating the story. In nautical use, a ‘cat’s paw’ is the mark made by a puff or gust of wind on an otherwise calm sea – possibly an allusion to cats dabbing at the surface of fish ponds.
(a) cat that walks alone A self-possessed, independent person. ‘I am the cat that walks alone’ was a favourite expression of the newspaper magnate Lord Beaverbrook (1879–1964). He was alluding to ‘The Cat That Walked By Himself’ in The Just-So Stories (1902) by Rudyard Kipling.
caught in the act Caught in the very act for which retribution will be forthcoming. Known by 1655. In Jane Austen’s novel Persuasion (1818), there is rather ‘caught in the fact’. Compare caught red-handed, where a murderer still has blood on his hands.
caught up in a sinister maze (or web) of plot and double-cross Publishing and book-reviewing cliché (in various combinations) when promoting and discussing (usually) spy fiction and thrillers. ‘A sinister web of power, lust and perversion binds the psychotic killer hunting him down to the traumatic childhood murder of his mother’ – The Times (19 November 1994); ‘Turow and Grisham are often lumped together as operators in the same territory, but separately they tend very different gardens: where Turow lures the reader into an intricate and sinister maze, with Grisham you never get beyond raking and hoeing and pulling up the weeds’ – Sunday Times (22 January 1995); ‘Giorgio Ambrosoli, the young Milanese lawyer whose sleuthing, begun in 1974, brought down the Sicilian banking tycoon Michele Sindona. The latter’s sinister web linked the Vatican, the Mafia, the Christian Democrat Party, and the secret P2 masonic lodge’ – The European (7 April 1995); ‘Niamh went for one more session. “They promised me the sun, moon and stars. They said I’d be put in touch with other women and that, they would pass on information as it became available.” She heard nothing. “They left me in darkness and in fear.” By the time the results of the virus test arrived, the sense of being in a sinister maze had deepened’ – The Irish Times (8 April 1995); ‘Secret government papers released today at the Public Record Office in Kew reveal a web of intrigue and deceit by state and monarchy that has remained hidden for 66 years’ – The Independent (30 January 2003).
causing grave concern Journalistic and official cliché – when warning of some imminent unpleasantness, especially a person’s death. ‘While neither of the men involved in either of the Bishops Avenue deals is in any way crooked, the astonishing scale of the Eastern bloc spending spree is causing grave concern among the capital’s most senior crime fighters, who fear it signals the arrival of the Russian mafia, or the Organizatsiya, as it is known and feared on the violent streets of Moscow’ – Evening Standard (London) (6 May 1994); ‘As air traffic within Europe is predicted to rise by around 60 per cent over the next ten years, the potential for future problems is still a grave concern’ – The European (10 June 1994); ‘The Glasgow women’s rights campaigner Sheena Duncan said the sheriff’s remarks had caused grave concern. She added: “It is a simplistic analysis of the problem, particularly when you think about what women suffer”’ – The Scotsman (24 June 1994); ‘A public meeting in Bansha, Co Tipperary, resolved on June 26th, 1926: “That we the citizens desire to express our grave concern at the circulation of undesirable literature, which constitutes a grave danger to the moral and national welfare of the country, and we urge upon the Government the need for immediate legislation on the lines recommended by the Catholic Truth
