Friendly Fill-Ins and Words with Webster

You are visiting our blog on a very exciting day, one on which we are starting two new things that we hope will be a lot of fun.

Friendly Fill-Ins

First, we are excited to be joining Friendly Fill-Ins for the very first time. In case you’re not familiar with Friendly Fill-Ins, they are basically fill-in-the-blank questions posed by 15andmeowing and McGuffy’s Reader. They are a fun way to learn a little bit about the authors of the blogs you read.

This week, the first two fill-ins, answered by She of Little Talent, are from 15andmeowing, and the second two, answered by Real Cat Paisley, come from Annie of McGuffy’s Reader.

Old SoLT’s answers:

1. Adopt a senior cat! Or sponsor one. You could help a cat enjoy the best years of his or her life!

2. My favorite magazine is American Philatelist, the magazine about stamp collecting from the American Philatelic Society. Other people I know think this is weird, but I love all the stamp-nerd stuff!

Paisley’s answers:

3. Recently, I went all Halloween cat on the dog and scared her. It was hilarious!

4. Even though my family wishes I would get along with the dog, I, well, just NO.

Words with Webster

Next, welcome to the first installment of our newest feature, Words with Webster. Let’s just jump in and go to Webster for the explanation. Webs?

Real Cat Webster: Hey, everybody! You know, most people don’t realize that I’m an armchair cat linguist. My hobby is learning new words about cats. Maybe you remember some of my earlier work, seen in the posts “Back to School Vocabulary Word: Pre-Furred” and “What Does Kitty-Corner Have to Do with Cats?” Well, right now I’m doing a project about finding different words for “cat,” and I’m kicking off Words with Webster with four historical cat words. I got them from the Oxford English Dictionary’s Historical Thesaurus. They’re in order from newest to oldest:

Pop Quiz! Would you call this cat

(a) Mog

(b) Pussums

(c) Moggie

(d) Tigerkin

(e) all of the above

(f) none of the above?

Mog: (1926.) A cat. The thesaurus did not say so, but I think this word is pretty obviously short for “moggie” (see below).
Pussums: (1912.) Term of endearment for a cat.
Moggie: (1911.) If you happen to be British or read a lot of British books, you’ll recognize this word for an ordinary domestic cat.
Tigerkin: (1849.) This word could mean a small tiger, tiger cub, or a cat.

I think “tigerkin” is an especially neat word. “Pussums” is fun too. Just for fun, try working them in to your everyday conversations!

Got an interesting cat word you think Webster should tackle? Let us know!