Word.ws English Dictionary

Cheshire cats

Cheshire cats is the plural of Cheshire cat.

Meaning of Cheshire cat

Proper noun

the Cheshire cat (plural Cheshire cats)

  1. A fictional cat with a broad fixed grin, made popular by Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865).
    • CHESHIRE CAT. He grins like a Cheshire cat; said of any one who shows his teeth and gums in laughing.1788, Francis Grose, A classical dictionary of the vulgar tongue, 2nd corrected and enlarged edition, London
  2. (attributive) A technique that involves hiding a class's data behind a pointer, so that the code remains binary-compatible even after future changes to members and functionality.
    • the Cheshire cat idiom

Questions about Cheshire cats

What is Cheshire cats the plural of?
Cheshire cats is the plural of Cheshire cat.

Words near Cheshire cats in the dictionary

  1. Chesher
  2. Cheshier
  3. Cheshiers
  4. Cheshire
  5. Cheshire cat
  6. Cheshire cats
  7. Cheshire cheese
  8. Cheshire cheeses
  9. Cheshire County
  10. Cheshire East
  11. Cheshire moon

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Cheshire cats (page history and authors); Cheshire cat (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “Cheshire cats.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cheshire_cats. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.