Wildcat

How to spell wildcat

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce wildcat

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does wildcat mean?

1. nounA small to medium wild feline, especially the native European species, or any undomesticated cat.
2. adjectiveDone without official authorisation or against the rules, especially of an industrial strike.
3. nounAn oil or gas well drilled speculatively in an area not known to be productive.

Wildcat in a sentence

• noun

  The documentary tracked a wildcat hunting through the Scottish highlands.

• adjective

  The factory ground to a halt during a wildcat strike that the union had not sanctioned.

• noun

  The company sank a wildcat in territory no one had ever drilled before.

• noun

  Conservationists are trying to protect the last breeding wildcat in the region.

• adjective

  Management warned that any wildcat walkout would breach the agreement.

• noun

  Investors lost a fortune when the wildcat came up dry.

Where does wildcat come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Wildcat is a plain compound of two very old native English words, 'wild' and 'cat', and it has meant an untamed feline since the Middle Ages, when 'wilde cat' described the small native European cat that lived beyond human control. The element 'wild' descends from Old English 'wilde', meaning uncultivated or living in a natural state, while 'cat' comes from Old English 'catt', itself part of a wide family of similar words across Europe. By the 1800s the word had jumped from the animal to people and ventures that behaved in a fierce, reckless, or unregulated way, which is how American business slang produced the 'wildcat' oil well drilled on a hunch and the 'wildcat' bank with no sound backing. From there came the modern 'wildcat strike', a walkout staged without official union approval. Because both parts are common everyday words, the spelling holds no real trap beyond remembering it is written as one solid word.

How the word is built

• wild (untamed)
• cat (feline); a transparent Germanic compound