civvy cat

civvy cat noun: originally the civet of Africa and Asia; now a skunk.

Noun

civvy cat (plural civvy cats)

(US, regional) Originally the civet of Africa and Asia; now a skunk.
- I hope it's nothing to make you smell like a civvy-cat, for I can't sit in the coach with none of them there French stinks, it poisons me alive, and so pray don't let's have no poppy-loat.1810, Splendid Follies; or, Mistley Manor, volume 1, page 124
- civvy-cat, n. A civet, a little striped skunk, very similar to the phoby-cat of the Southwest.[1927, V. Randolph, “More Words from the Ozarks”, in Dialect Notes, volume 5, American Dialect Society, page 473

Soup sandwiches on pretzels, baked jack rabbit under glass, roast breast of mink, sirloin of catfish, southern fried civvy cat, prairie dog au gratin and other choice morsels will be featured daily.1953 May 22, State Hornet, volume 5, number 29, pages 1, 4:
A few informants use civet cat (6) and civvy cat (2.2), although some state that this means a different kind of varmint.[1962, E. Bagby Atwood, The Regional Vocabulary of Texas, University of Texas Press, pages 53-54:

plural	civvy cats

A clipping of civet cat.

What does civvy cat mean?: Civvy cat means originally the civet of Africa and Asia; now a skunk.
How do you use civvy cat in a sentence?: Soup sandwiches on pretzels, baked jack rabbit under glass, roast breast of mink, sirloin of catfish, southern fried civvy cat, prairie dog au gratin and other choice morsels will be featured daily.
What part of speech is civvy cat?: Civvy cat is a noun.
What is the plural of civvy cat?: The plural of civvy cat is civvy cats.

Adapted from Wiktionary: civvy 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: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “civvy cat.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/civvy_cat. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.