Word.ws English Dictionary

kit-cat

kit-cat noun: a short portrait, measuring 28 or 29 by 36 inches, less than half-length, but including the hands.

kit-cat: a short portrait, measuring 28 or 29 by 36 inches, less than half-length, but including the hands
Image: Godfrey Kneller, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

kit-cat (plural kit-cats)

  1. (historical) A short portrait, measuring 28 or 29 by 36 inches, less than half-length, but including the hands.

Forms of kit-cat

pluralkit-cats
alternative formkitcat
alternative formkitkat
alternative formkit-kat

Origin of kit-cat

So called because the size was adopted by Sir Godfrey Kneller for the portraits he painted of the members of London's 18th-century Kit-Cat Club, said to have been named after innkeeper Christopher Catt.

Questions about kit-cat

What does kit-cat mean?
Kit-cat means a short portrait, measuring 28 or 29 by 36 inches, less than half-length, but including the hands.
What part of speech is kit-cat?
Kit-cat is a noun.
What is the plural of kit-cat?
The plural of kit-cat is kit-cats.

Words near kit-cat in the dictionary

  1. kit violins
  2. kit-bash
  3. kit-bashed
  4. kit-bashes
  5. kit-bashing
  6. kit-cat
  7. kit-cats
  8. kit-kat
  9. kit-kats
  10. kit-violin
  11. kit-violins

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: kit-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: “kit-cat.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/kit-cat. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.