Kitty

How to spell kitty

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce kitty

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does kitty mean?

1. nounAn affectionate, informal name for a cat, especially a young one.
2. nounA shared pool of money collected from several people for a common purpose.

Kitty in a sentence

• The children fed the kitty a saucer of milk each morning.

• Each player added five pounds to the kitty before the game began.

• A small grey kitty curled up on the windowsill in the sun.

• The office keeps a kitty for tea, coffee, and biscuits.

Where does kitty come from?

Language of origin: French

Kitty arose in English as an affectionate, diminutive form for a cat, built from 'kit', itself a shortening of 'kitten', plus the friendly '-y' ending that English loves to attach to pet names and nursery words. The 'kitten' behind it travelled into Middle English from Old French 'chitoun' or 'cheton', a small form of 'chat' meaning cat, which traces back to the Late Latin 'cattus'. By the time it became 'kitty' in the 1700s it was a household coaxing word for a cat, much as 'doggy' is for a dog. The quite separate gambling sense, a shared pool of money, also appears in the 1800s; one likely explanation links it to 'kit' meaning a collection of items gathered together, though the precise route is uncertain. Because that money sense is murkier, the cat origin is the secure part of the story.

How the word is built

• kit (from kitten/cat)
• -y (diminutive/affectionate suffix)