Word.ws English Dictionary

cat melodeon

cat melodeon adjective: terrible, appalling; of very poor quality.

Adjective

cat melodeon

  1. (Ireland, informal) Terrible, appalling; of very poor quality.
    • We're fed up of
      festivals and funerals
      and Munster Finals
      with backs that were
      cat melodeon.1997, Michael Coady, “The Longest Puck”, in All Souls, Gallery Press, →ISBN, page 65
    • Cllr Danny Collins (Ind) pointed out that half of West Cork doesn’t have phone coverage either, and that the situation with broadband was ‘cat melodeon’.2016 April 18, “Broadband service is ‘cat melodeon'”, in The Southern Star
  2. (Ireland, informal) Cacophonous; raucous.
    • The lights went down and the crowd went cat melodeon
      We were all revved up and ready to engage
      Having hitch hiked all the way from Minnesota
      Zimmerman was there before us on the stage2021 Christy Moore and Wally Page, "Zozimus & Zimmerman"

Forms of cat melodeon

alternative formcatmalogen
alternative formcat malogen
alternative formcat melodium

Origin of cat melodeon

Compare cat (“terrible”) and cat's melody. Ciaran Carson suggests the influence of Irish cat marbh or cat mara; literally "dead cat" or "sea cat", figuratively "calamity".

Questions about cat melodeon

What does cat melodeon mean?
Cat melodeon means terrible, appalling; of very poor quality.
What part of speech is cat melodeon?
Cat melodeon is an adjective.

Words near cat melodeon in the dictionary

  1. cat liver fluke
  2. cat liver flukes
  3. cat malogen
  4. cat man
  5. cat meat
  6. cat melodeon
  7. cat melodium
  8. cat men
  9. cat milk
  10. cat milks
  11. cat mill

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cat melodeon (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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