dead cat
dead cat noun: used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see dead, cat.
Noun (1)
dead cat (plural dead cats)
- Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see dead, cat.
- A furry windscreen; a furry cover placed over a microphone to muffle the sound of wind.
- "A camera operator needs batteries, lenses, cards, filters. A wardrobe supervisor has racks of costumes. A sound recorder carries a dead cat on a stick. But a director only needs his folder."2012 August 16, Neil Oseman, Inside the Director's Folder
- "The mic blimp is a wind-resistant cover that goes over the boom mic to reduce environmental background noise. It's commonly referred to as a "dead cat", because it's covered in fuzzy gray hair."2019, July 2. "Film 101: What Is a Boom Operator? Understanding the Job of a Boom Operator", Masterclass.com.
Noun (2)
dead cat (plural dead cats)
- A shocking or sensational announcement made in order to distract one's political base from existing problems and previous failures.
- dead cat strategy
- The problem is that once the idea of the dead cat had been discovered, suddenly there were deceased felines everywhere. Everything was a dead cat—every policy, every interview, every gaffe. Everything existed only to detract attention from something else.2019 November 19, Charlotte Lydia Riley, “Dear journalists: please stop calling everything a “dead cat””, in Prospect Magazine, archived from the original on 06 Jan 2023
Verb
dead cat (third-person singular simple present dead cats, present participle dead catting, simple past and past participle dead catted)
- To announce (something) as a dead cat; to raise an issue as a political distraction.
- Long picked scars and carefully nurtured injustices can serve a purpose, and we can see it in Obrador's dead catting, the narrative of Brexit, the saga of the Falkland Islands, the Greek financial crisis, and independence movements in democratic nations across Europe.2021, Otto English, Fake History, page 170
- A part of the Right's offensive, however, was to not only be bloody, bold, resolute and brief in their media messaging, but also be smart in their use of dead-catting, a media offensive technique to which this book has previously referred.2021, Grant Rodwell, Education Policy and the Political Right
dead cat meaning in Bengali
dead cat in Bengali
- একটি চমকপ্রদ, সংবেদনশীল ঘোষণা
Forms of dead cat
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | dead cats |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | dead cats |
| present participle | dead catting |
| past participle | dead catted |
| past | dead catted |
Origin of dead cat
[Alt: A dark furry cover on a boom microphone] The instrument is named for its resemblance to an actual dead cat.
Introduced by former UK prime minister and then-mayor of London Boris Johnson in 2013 in a column for The Daily Telegraph.
Questions about dead cat
- What does dead cat mean?
- Dead cat means used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see dead, cat.
- What is dead cat in Bengali?
- Dead cat in Bengali is একটি চমকপ্রদ, সংবেদনশীল ঘোষণা. See Dead cat meaning in Bengali.
- What part of speech is dead cat?
- Dead cat can be a noun or a verb.
- What is the plural of dead cat?
- The plural of dead cat is dead cats.
Words near dead cat in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: dead cat (page history and authors); dead cat (Bengali Wiktionary) (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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Naomi Persephone Amethyst (NaomiAmethyst)-dead cat.wav.
Cite this entry: “dead cat.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dead_cat. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.