{"id":23167,"date":"2023-11-16T14:40:11","date_gmt":"2023-11-16T14:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=23167"},"modified":"2023-11-16T14:40:11","modified_gmt":"2023-11-16T14:40:11","slug":"catty-cornered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=23167","title":{"rendered":"Catty-cornered"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you\u2019re sitting <strong>catty-corner<\/strong> from someone, what does that mean?<\/p>\n<p><a data-flickr-embed=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/laughingmonk\/2724832037\/in\/photolist-59MtCH-mStBx-6DznuR-bn1pA6-6qwtRp-dYq3So-buPV6q-aAg5p6-5yaxDR-6XFgGx-69ff6Q-69fePU-dXNPGA-JTVTW-2eGuyGw-aWscte-y9jXsd-fc3nic-dsDCxq-5fR3E-2N133V-5JhvLc-gNWhXs-5tLJG8-6M1hKC-Jpr2Tg-m5bbe8-M3cTUZ-zAjnm-aoSi7E-rj8xFH-2kVf1z5-nq8cuH-yoCnhA-2m3MGwE-9dJTWG-2m3E9Tb-2m843Ea-47EW1g-dVGNsL-cpeF95-LEvRVP-LuXJKm-LuXJCN-gGxRMi-kjDQ68-9k1rD-MAApH-9jX96-2Wmddp\" title=\"kitty corner\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/3108\/2724832037_4599503708_z.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" alt=\"kitty corner\"\/><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>This is an expression that has come up a number of times recently in books I\u2019m reading and which puzzles me a bit. So I thought I\u2019d find out what it means and where it comes from.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Catty-corner<\/strong> means \u201cdiagonally across from (one another)\u201d or \u201clocated diagonally in relation to something, especially across an intersection.\u201d, and is used in the USA and Canada. It is also written <strong>cattycorner<\/strong>, <strong>catty-cornered<\/strong> or <strong>kitty-corner<\/strong>. It makes me think of a cat in a corner.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s apparently a corruption of <strong>cater-corner(ed)<\/strong> with influence from <strong>catty<\/strong> (cat-like). <strong>Cater-corner(ed)<\/strong> means \u201csomething at a diagonal to another; of four corners, those diagonal to another.\u201d in the USA and is an old dialect word in the UK meaning \u201cuneven, not square, as mislaid stones or people with a limping gait.\u201d It comes from <strong>cater<\/strong>, and old word for four, particularly in card and dice games, from the French <strong>quatre<\/strong> (four), and <strong>cornered<\/strong> (possessing corners or angles) [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/catty-corner\">source<\/a>]. <\/p>\n<p>According to the <a href=\"https:\/\/grammarist.com\/usage\/catty-corner-kitty-corner\/\">Grammarist<\/a>, the <strong>cater<\/strong> in <strong>cater-cornered<\/strong> originally referred to the four spots on a die, or the four legs of a beast, and came to refer to the corners of four city blocks meeting. Over time it came to mean something positioned diagonally from something else. Another version of it is <strong>caddy-corner<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Are there words or phrases in other languages that have similar meanings?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you\u2019re sitting catty-corner from someone, what does that mean? This is an expression that has come up a number of times recently in books I\u2019m reading and which puzzles me a bit. So I thought I\u2019d find out what it means and where it comes from. Catty-corner means \u201cdiagonally across from (one another)\u201d or [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,111,10,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-french","category-language","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23167"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23168,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23167\/revisions\/23168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}