Word.ws English Dictionary

dead cat bounce

UK/dɛd kæt bəʊ̯ns/US/dɛd kæt baʊ̯ns/

dead cat bounce noun: a temporary recovery in the price of a financial instrument which has fallen rapidly and is expected to fall further in the long run.

dead cat bounce: a temporary recovery in the price of a financial instrument which has fallen rapidly and is...
Image: Thomas J. O'Halloran, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

dead cat bounce (plural dead cat bounces)

  1. (idiomatic) A temporary recovery in the price of a financial instrument which has fallen rapidly and is expected to fall further in the long run.
    • Now, if you look at the chart of a stock that has suffered a collapse, you will see that at the bottom of each drop there is a small uptick, a rise in the price. This uptick, representing the smart money getting out because it knows what is coming, and fools getting in because they don't, is known...1988, Sarah Graves [pseudonym; Mary Squibb], The Dead Cat Bounce (Home Repair is Homicide Series; 1), New York, N.Y.: Bantam Books, →ISBN
    • There's this thing called the Dead Cat Bounce. It's a stock market term, I believe. What it's talking about is the fact that even a stock that is essentially worthless and really going nowhere but down for ever can register a slight upward movement, just for a bit, because there is generally a...2002, Iain Banks, “Dead Cat Bounce”, in Dead Air, London: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN

Forms of dead cat bounce

pluraldead cat bounces
alternative formdead-cat bounce

Origin of dead cat bounce

From the idea that a cat dropped from a height might bounce without this indicating any actual life after hitting the ground.

Questions about dead cat bounce

What does dead cat bounce mean?
Dead cat bounce means a temporary recovery in the price of a financial instrument which has fallen rapidly and is expected to fall further in the long run.
What part of speech is dead cat bounce?
Dead cat bounce is a noun.
How do you pronounce dead cat bounce?
Dead cat bounce is pronounced /dɛd kæt bəʊ̯ns/ (UK).
What is the plural of dead cat bounce?
The plural of dead cat bounce is dead cat bounces.

Words near dead cat bounce in the dictionary

  1. dead bolts
  2. dead cake
  3. dead cakes
  4. dead calm
  5. dead cat
  6. dead cat bounce
  7. dead cat bounces
  8. dead cats
  9. dead catted
  10. dead catting
  11. dead center

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dead cat bounce (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: en-au-dead cat bounce.ogg.

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